In attempting to make the case for my argument that leadership is best viewed as an organizational – rather than as an individual – characteristic, an intermediate purpose has been to reduce the false distinction made by many between leadership and management. The thing is, though, that this sort of thinking is a tough nut to crack.
Moreover, as Shaun Kieran delicately points out to me in a comment to Wednesday’s post, “Creatures of culture,” the people who engage in it are hardly drooling idiots. Nor, he adds, are they necessarily evil for stubbornly persisting in promoting this approach to the topic.
It would, of course, be much easier to argue the matter if my opponents in this debate were at least one or the other. But I am perfectly happy, from my own experience, to stipulate with Shaun that they are neither. They are thoughtful people who are eager to help us learn how to better run our organizations. Moreover, for all that I think they have this particular issue quite wrong, many of them are nevertheless very effective indeed in advancing that cause.
But if we stipulate to that, I think it is fair enough to ask them to stipulate to this: they have not made their case. No one has proven that leadership is different from management, much less that it is a characteristic inherent in individuals independently of the context in which those individuals operate, one that they carry with them from one organization to another and which they then instill into groups otherwise bereft of it.
We’ll just stick with the distinction issue, today. In the past several days I have seen several posts on other sites addressing this issue, defending the contention that leadership is distinct from and superior to management. What they all seem to do, however, is to fall back on one or both of two types of argument:
1) They simply repeat their conclusions with increasing energy and insistence, but offer only their personal certainty as evidence.
2) They cite the great number of other people who proffer the same conclusions – even, for some reason, advancing personal testaments to the intelligence and character of some particular individuals from that group.
It is of no moment – indeed, it is really quite unfortunate – that thousands of books – some of them, we are inexplicably reminded, thousands of pages long – repeat this claim without being able to substantiate it in a way that generates consensus on the topic. After all, much of what has been written by some academics has been thoroughly discredited by others and, as we are learning from still others, we quite possibly should simply give up listening to any of them about anything in any event.
Neither is it of much help to their cause that they are intelligent, nice, or well-intentioned sorts. Are we lacking in evidence today that such persons can still get things exactly wrong – and carry vast numbers of equally intelligent, nice, and trusting people along with them to destruction into the bargain?
One thing they all do seem to share is the tendency to fall back on slogans about placing or climbing ladders, doing right or right doing, or the like. The more popular of these phrases are repeated in many of these arguments, and are presented as though they are unanswerable deal-closers. And it must be acknowledged that they are surprisingly effective for recruiting new disciples to the individual leadership movement.
Like the best such rhetorical devices, they seem to capture a profound truth in a brilliantly telling and memorable way. But if you take a moment to examine them, you see that their surface profundity is false. They are, when all is said and done, just catchy phrases void of supportable content. If the case were otherwise, the content would be offered and supported. But it never is; rather, promoters of these views simply resort to method 1) or 2), above.
So, it is sufficient here, today, to reassert this contention: it remains unproven and unconvincingly demonstrated that management and leadership are incompatibly distinct practices which are exhibited separately; the former by a type of person who is incapable of demonstrating the latter, or the latter by another type who wouldn’t deign to practice the former.
On Monday we will return to the main track of the current discussion, and will hopefully be able to draw it to a close later that same week. Won’t that be nice!
Have a great weekend – see you soon.
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Today’s tips: The always creatively thought-provoking Eclecticity has a theory that I am at risk of going over the deep end on this topic. He has tested it by posting possibly the best physical evidence yet produced that management and leadership are indeed different. Please stop over to see it. While you are there, note two things about the exhibit: 1) it shows management in a position superior to that of leadership, which is only as it should be; and 2) it indicates that while they may be different, they do intersect. That is an interesting idea: to examine them at the point of intersection. Perhaps we’ll look at that in the future – thanks Eclecticity!
And speaking of recent posts on the general topic of this debate, please see Nina Simosko‘s essay called Hands-off Management – she describes what I would refer to as the managerial duty, not necessarily to personally provide leadership, but to establish and maintain a purposeful leadership environment. Please take a moment to read this thoughtful view of the matter by Nina who is, by the way, a finalist as best service industry female executive in a major, prestigious international recognition program – do stop over to learn more and offer your congratulations and support.
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Technorati Tags: leadership, management, organization, academic, Eclecticity, Nina Simosko, executive, Shaun Kieran
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6 Comments
As always, provocative Jim. But, to play the devil’s advocate, I assume you have the body of evidence that would conclude your position? At a certain point, the argument itself becomes a red herring. (What color IS a red herring?)
It seems to me the ultimate issue is the performance of the organization, where such semantic distinctions get mooted.
Or…?
Jim,
Great piece and one which certainly warrants further discussion. None of the thinking on this topic, my own thinking included, can be considered the gospel when it comes to defining leadership and management and the relation between the two.
Also, thanks so much for the inclusion in Today’s Tip! Much appreciation as always.
Hello Lee,
By all means – press where you think you see an opening to see if it gives way – we’ll all learn from that – that’s the debate.
As it happens, you also ask a good question, but it should be directed to those who claim that the subject is closed, and who point to what they imagine to be evidence placing their positions beyond argument.
I am not one of those people, and have never suggested that I am or that I have incontestable evidence that should shut down debate.
Rather, I have a view of the matter that I believe makes sense of everything I’ve seen, experienced, and that I’ve learned from a wide range of sources. So, I offer it for debate, and I invite that debate precisely to draw challenges to my assertions and test them against those challenges by attempting to explain how my experience with the topic has led to me to the opinions I now have of it.
Indeed, the current series is precisely that sort of exercise: an effort to respect the expression of dissatisfaction with my arguments or incomprehension of my points made by commentors to a post several weeks ago by attempting to resolve those shortcomings. I would only hope that those who have generated this response would offer it the same respect with which it is presented; and I believe, in the main, that they have.
Your concluding point is germane, here – the issue is performance, but if we don’t understand what leads to that performance, then it may be too early to say that our competing efforts to do so have been mooted. So, let’s continue the debate!
Thanks, as always!
Hello Nina,
I agree with you – but this lecture should be preached to the preachers who believe they have found the truth, not to we parisioners who still seek it.
Thanks for stopping by, for your excellent work and writing, and best of luck in New York next month – please be sure to let us know how things turn out!
I guess I should step up and defend the debate on ‘Leadership vs. Management’ since that has been the subject of my own blog’s exploration for several years.
First of all, I would concur with the assertion by Managing Leadership that more can be made out of this difference than is warranted. At its heart, it is essentially a semantic distinction and semantic debates can be among the most boring and pedantic. Still, I think they can be worthy of consideration. Words are powerful and affect how people perceive and interpret the world. We have two words here – ‘leadership’ and ‘management’ – and like it or not they have taken on a range of diverging connotations. Examining these differences can help to clarify thinking about good leadership.
Secondly, I think looking at two concepts that are similar but different is a helpful way to understand the common central subject. My definition of the distinction looks at executives’ approach to risk. The two terms allow one to look at both sides of risk with objective of striking a critical balance between the two. Much of an executive’s role is to strike a balance between two trade-offs, eg. cost/benefit, upside/downside, short-term/long-term. I find the Leader/Manager distinction to be a helpful one to look at both sides of the dynamic of risk.
Finally, I observe a number of people of using the ‘Management’ word as an equivalent to ‘bad leadership’ (Bennis Revisited) as Jim indeed points out. I agree that this is a dangerous association. No matter how you frame the distinction, ‘Management’ does serve many useful purposes, but these benefits will not be properly fostered is people think that things labelled at ‘management’ are somehow inferior. Furthermore, the Leadership/Management distinction is one simple way to get across the notion that ‘Leadership’ takes many forms and guises. A number of academics have multi-quadrant and persona models (eg. Blanchard’s Situational Leadership), but sometimes it is useful to have a simple two-way distinction that say ‘one way is like X and the other like Y’.
Hello Bruce,
Thanks for stopping by and joining in.
Your approach to the subject – as one that offers opportunities for understanding what actually happens, rather than necessarily as championing one or another channel presumably producing those events – is interesting.
I will be very interested to learn more about your thinking on this by visiting your work on your site (which I hope other visitors will do also by linking through from your comment above), as well as, hopefully, by enjoying your continued contributions here.
Thanks again!
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