| Are You a Leader or a Manager? Some Surprising Answers |
Leadership is all the rage these days with new leadership development programs proliferating. There's also a huge difference in opinion about what should be covered in any leadership training. In fact, we offer our own leadership programs, co-facilitated by my associates with extensive backgrounds in leadership development.
The best definition of the difference between leadership and management that I've heard is this: management is telling people what to do and leadership is inspiring them to do what you want. Yet we always try to steer our clients toward management sessions first. Our management workshops involve skills such as performance management, giving and receiving feedback, documentation, managing staff with different values and so on. In our experience, leadership training needs to come after the basic skills. "...management is telling people what to do and leadership is inspiring them to do what you want" Frequently, of course, the client will try to inform us that their managers already have those management skills. Yet I can guarantee you that if they actually participate in our management sessions, even the top executives will stumble over our documentation exercises. And if we interview their staff before the sessions - as we recommend - most executives' staff will tell us that their boss doesn't know how to give or receive feedback.
What Should You Do?
By all means, recommend or participate in leadership development, but make sure that you really do know and practice the basics of management first. Ideally, leadership development should include sections such as leadership theory, emotional intelligence work, managing conflict, effective leadership styles and so on.
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Did You Know
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We provide both management and leadership training. For more information, call or write us at: 303-216-1020 or [email protected]
Read Lynne's book "We Need to Talk -- Tough Conversations with Your Employee"
and learn to tackle any topic with sensitivity and smarts.
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3985 Wonderland Hill | Suite 106 | Boulder, CO 80304
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