BY ROBYN
BENINCASA
Taking
a team from ordinary to extraordinary means understanding and embracing the
difference between management and leadership. According to writer and
consultant Peter Drucker, "Management is doing things right; leadership is
doing the right things."
Manager and leader are
two completely different roles, although we often use the terms
interchangeably. Managers are facilitators of their team members’ success. They
ensure that their people have everything they need to be productive and
successful; that they’re well trained, happy and have minimal roadblocks in
their path; that they’re being groomed for the next level; that they are
recognized for great performance and coached through their challenges.
Conversely,
a leader can be anyone on the team who has a particular talent, who is
creatively thinking out of the box and has a great idea, who has experience in
a certain aspect of the business or project that can prove useful to the
manager and the team. A leader leads based on strengths, not titles.
The
best managers consistently allow different leaders to emerge and inspire their
teammates (and themselves!) to the next level.
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| ROBYN BENINCASA leads by example |
When
you’re dealing with ongoing challenges and changes, and you’re in uncharted
territory with no means of knowing what comes next, no one can be expected to
have all the answers or rule the team with an iron fist based solely on the
title on their business card. It just doesn’t work for day-to-day operations.
Sometimes a project is a long series of obstacles and opportunities coming at
you at high speed, and you need every ounce of your collective hearts and minds
and skill sets to get through it.
This
is why the military style of top-down leadership is never effective in the
fast-paced world of adventure racing or, for that matter, our daily lives
(which is really one big, long adventure, hopefully!). I truly believe in Tom
Peters’s observation that the best leaders don’t create followers; they create
more leaders. When we share leadership, we’re all a heck of a lot smarter, more
nimble and more capable in the long run, especially when that long run is
fraught with unknown and unforeseen challenges.
Change leadership styles
Not
only do the greatest teammates allow different leaders to consistently emerge
based on their strengths, but also they realize that leadership can and should
be situational, depending on the needs of the team. Sometimes a teammate needs
a warm hug. Sometimes the team needs a visionary, a new style of coaching,
someone to lead the way or even, on occasion, a kick in the bike shorts. For
that reason, great leaders choose their leadership style like a golfer chooses
his or her club, with a calculated analysis of the matter at hand, the end goal
and the best tool for the job.
My
favorite study on the subject of kinetic leadership is Daniel Goleman’s Leadership That Gets Results, a
landmark 2000 Harvard Business Review study. Goleman and his
team completed a three-year study with over 3,000 middle-level managers. Their
goal was to uncover specific leadership behaviors and determine their effect on
the corporate climate and each leadership style’s effect on bottom-line
profitability.
The
research discovered that a manager’s leadership style was responsible for 30%
of the company’s bottom-line profitability! That’s far too much to ignore.
Imagine how much money and effort a company spends on new processes,
efficiencies, and cost-cutting methods in an effort to add even one percent to
bottom-line profitability, and compare that to simply inspiring managers to be
more kinetic with their leadership styles. It’s a no-brainer.
(to be continued)
Source:
http://www.fastcompany.com/1838481/6-leadership-styles-and-when-you-should-use-them
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