What am I?... A leader or a Manager?

Managing is basically about doing what maintains and/or develops

the ongoing operations of an organisation. It is concerned with the management of people,processes and capital.For managing capital the managers perform activities like budgeting and planning.For managing people they spend their time efforts and energies on things like performance reviews, discipline, grievance handling, recruitment, training etc.

Information on the Best practices is available for these processes. Managers learn them through instructor-led and on-the-job training and perfect them through practice. To be a better manager one just needs to learn to do them the right way.

Leading or Leadership on the other hand has a lot to do with showing direction and inspiring people to head towards it. 
It stems from the ongoing operation of the organisation and helps it to transcend beyond it. Rather than depending on systems and processes, Leadership depends on many positive personal traits like moral strength, vision, self discipline,building & nurturing relationships and motivating people.

Since every leader is different and every situation a leader faces is different, there are different styles of leadership. That is the reason leadership is best learnt and taught by and while   guiding people and mentoring them as they face and make virtues out of their own challenges.

Therefore the only place and way to acquire the strength to lead is,’on-the-job’, ideally under the guidance of a coach.

How can I become a better leader?

All of us are evolving and growing as leaders and mostly we do it by trial and error. What accelerates this evolution and makes it less painful at the same time, is the support of ‘people who matter’ to us. They are our informal leadership coaches and care for us enough to tell us if we are heading the right direction. We too value their opinions and listen to them.

It’s not too difficult to spot our ‘people who matter’. They are the ones who want us to become a perfect version of us rather than facsimiles of them.

Lucky are those among us who have professional colleagues, friends and family members who have the patience and inclination to listen to us and show us what we are not seeing,

help us see the possibilities and make our decisions. However due to the complexity of challenges leaders in today’s organisations are facing, they are turning to professional leadership coaches.

Some thoughts as a way forward…

•       Spare some time to reflect on where you are headed.
•   What kind of legacy you intend to leave behind in the   

               role you are in?

•   What value do you want to add to your family and

               friends?

•   What is the role you want beyond the next one? (and  

               how would the current one and the next one help  
          you   get  there?)

•   Think about who are your ‘people who matter’.
•   Are they aware that you look at them this way?
•   How can you seek and get more of their support?
•   What can you do for them to reciprocate?

The Metamorphosis

Leader Vs Manager is a very old debate.We keep hearing that ultimately every manager has to evolve into a leader.But does such an evolution really happen?I have not seen it .There are managers and there are leaders.Has any one seen such a  metamorphosis happen ? Please share the story with me if you have been witness to such a transformation.

It is fairly common to see processes like metamorphosis and evolution in the non-human part of this universe.In fact these terms come from Bio-Sciences and are now very widely used by practitioners and researchers in management and business.

The reason why this transformation doesn't seem to happen (I have not been a witness to it as I said earlier) or is not so wide spread,could be the resistance to change by the human,the social animal who happens to be a manager.It is of common knowledge that in the personal spheres of our day to day life, more our resistance to change or adopt something new, more difficult, painful and long-drawn becomes the process of  evolving into a new self .We resist the change till there is no option at all, even when adopting the change is necessary for our survival.Even when we can foresee the long terms payoffs, we tend to procrastinate and avoid the change.The case in point is the benefits of exercising, quitting smoking, switching over to a balanced diet or going for a medical check up.

I feel it's the same resistance and tendency to procrastinate that prevents and many times delays the metamorphosis of a manager into a leader.