You may be familiar with Peter Drucker’s assertion that management is doing things right and leadership is doing the right things.
According to Drucker’s view, you might say that a manager makes sure you climb a ladder efficiently while a leader makes sure your ladder is leaning against the right wall.
These are succinct definitions, but of course in reality the roles often overlap. Some managers are very good at helping people catch the vision of what’s possible, while some leaders are equally adept at making sure day-to-day deliverables are properly handled.
Still, in most organizations there’s a clear distinction between the roles of managers and leaders. And despite the many workplace paradigm shifts that occurred during the Covid pandemic, the view persists that career advancement requires a move from manager to leader.
Adam Bryant offers a cogent analysis of the subject. He’s the creator and former author of the iconic Corner Office column in The New York Times, and is now senior managing director at The ExCo Group, a leadership development and executive mentoring firm. Based on his work with hundreds of successful CEOs and fast-rising executives, Bryant has distilled his key insights into The Leap to Leader: How Ambitious Managers Make the Jump to Leadership.
What questions should people be asking themselves if they think they’d like to move into a leadership role?
“They should invest the time to think about why they want to lead others because these roles are often much harder than they appear,” Bryant says. “As a leader, you’re dealing with a lot of people problems and you’re putting out a lot of fires. Because it’s hard to get work done at work, you’re often facing a three-shift day and the work will bleed into weekends.”
Too often, Bryant says, “people can get enticed by a bigger title and the financial rewards that come with it rather than pausing and asking themselves if they really want to do the work that the job entails. Similarly, companies, when they are looking at their leadership pipeline and succession plans, too often just assume that every person wants to move up. So be clear about your ‘why’ to help you get through the tougher patches, because the sense of reward from a bigger title and higher pay tend to wear off.”
Bryant says the biggest challenge for people who make the leap to leadership roles is the mindset shift they’re required to make. “As a manager, there’s usually an explicit outcome that you are expected to deliver,” he says. “You’re given resources such as time, manpower and a budget to execute the plan. As a leader, you have to think more broadly about opportunities and what the organization needs that maybe other leaders haven’t considered. Doing that requires courage, and a willingness to take bets and own the consequences if things go wrong.”
Bryant says “selfless versus self-centered” is the central paradox facing leaders.
“Leaders who are more selfless think first about the people they are leading and the organization,” Bryant says. “What’s best for the people? They see their role more in terms of coaching people to unlock and develop their skills.”
One of the paradoxes of leadership, Bryant says, is that the role is simultaneously about you and not about you. “Yes, you set the tone and direction as the leader, and all the signals you send—verbal and nonverbal—will carry an outsized impact. But the role isn’t about you.”
Bryant quotes Christian Klein, the CEO of software company SAP, who said, “For me, what’s important is that I’m able, when I look at myself in the mirror in the morning, to answer the question, ‘Is what we are doing absolutely the right thing to do in the midterm and the long term?’ And as long as I can answer that question by saying yes, I know that I’m doing the right thing for all stakeholders.”
Some managers seem to assume that a Starbucks coffee card is the best (certainly one of the easiest) ways to recognize employee performance. What forms of recognition has Bryant found to be most helpful in reinforcing good performance?
“It’s true that people don’t necessarily want a Starbucks coffee card,” he says. They want somebody to come up to them and say, ‘Thank you for the time, effort, and thought you put into that project, which resulted in X in terms of impact.’ It’s about saying, ‘I see the contribution you made, and I appreciate you for it.’ It’s specific. It’s about giving people feedback on the ‘how’ of what they did well and what they could do better next time.”
Another type of recognition, he says, is about the “who”—telling someone why it’s important that they are on the team and what they bring to the table.
How can a leader shorten the learning curve for new team members?
Being a manager and a leader often requires telling people things they may not want to hear. Bryant has found some effective ways to develop and hone that skill?
He acknowledges that difficult conversations are hard. He’s found that one helpful approach is telling a direct report early on that you’re going to give them a lot of feedback—when they did something well and when they could have done something better. “Problems often start when people let things build up,” he says. “Better to give feedback in the moment and be direct, so that people become more used to it, and less defensive.”
He says another good approach is to frame the feedback in terms of wanting to help the other person succeed. “If you can clearly signal that you are on the person’s side, and want the best for them, then they are more likely to be open to hearing the feedback on how to improve,” he says.
Bryant recommends something called the “Post-it Note challenge,” and he explains what it means for someone’s personal and professional development.
“Leaders tend to have informal scouting reports on people in their organizations that are like three-word Post-it Notes that people have on their backs,” he says. “The first word is the person’s strength, followed by the word ‘but,’ followed by a skill that remains a question mark or is considered their weakness. Yes, it’s not fair, and it’s an overly simplistic way of looking at talent, but this is how the world works. Knowing that, people should manage their own Post-it Notes. If you’re ambitious and want to advance but you have a perceived weakness or question mark, then do everything you can to remove that question mark.”
It’s not uncommon for someone eager to “move up” to seek a mentor. Bryant explains what he’s found to be the keys to successfully finding, working with, and learning from a mentor.
He says a lot of people make the mistake of simply approaching someone and saying, “Will you mentor me?”
With that approach “you’re asking for a commitment without clarity about you want or need or expect,” he says. “Better to start small by asking someone you want to build a relationship with for their advice on a specific question. Then act on their advice and thank them for it, and then build from the relationship organically from there. Another key point is to make it easy for people to give you feedback. Make it clear that you want to learn and get better and that you’re not going to be defensive about anything.
Of all the factors that can help a leader be successful, Bryant says listening is among the most underappreciated skills.
“You won’t find any courses on listening in MBA programs,” he says, “and yet it’s an essential skill for effective leadership. The world is becoming so much more complicated, and so you need to listen carefully—and know how to draw people out for their best thinking—to illuminate any blind spots you may have.” Bryant says really listening to people is also the best way to show people that you respect them. “When leaders respect the people who work for them,” he says, “they will earn respect, and followership, in return.”
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