What is Most Important Leadership or Management?

OK, let me warn you, this post is a bit of a rant! I believe it’s a necessary rant, however, as I need to get a few things off my chest. I  get bothered sometimes by what I read in business circles. It’s this perpetual discussion of what is most important to business: management or leadership. The articles that drive me to rant have the same failing: they are generic and do not recognize the complexities that come when a business professional has to supervise other people to get organizational work done. It’s time to change the discussion from which is better than the other to why we need both. The truth is we don’t need leaders; we don’t need managers; we need both.

I’m ready to eat my keyboard if I read another article that minimizes the importance of effective management in organizations. Well, really I should be eating my keyboard right now because I just read an article that did just that. It started off well, by explaining the differences between management and leadership but then it ended with the same tired conclusion–leadership is more important than management. Really? Since when did efficiency in managing processes and human efforts to get something done become an unwanted step child? (No offense meant to step children!)

Managers vs Leaders

In today’s rapidly changing environment, business professionals are ineffective if they cannot both lead others to follow them to reach a shared vision and then manage the journey effectively enough so the organization actually gets something done. I’ve known people who were very effective at getting you to follow them. The business vision they described was also a desirable one. The problem with these business professionals was that their management skills were undeveloped. They did not know how to delegate work, run a meeting effectively, or develop an action plan to get the actual work done. Ultimately, they did not know their limitations. They did not know how to give their people responsibility and then get out of the way and let them do their jobs. These leaders were hypnotized by their own communication skills and their ability to influence people to follow them.

Years ago, I knew a senior level boss. He was a very smart man who had a clear vision of where his organizational area needed to go. He could also communicate this vision clearly.  When you heard him speak about the changes his area and the organization needed to make in general, you could not help but agree with him. He had a way of convincing people to join his team.

In fact, he hired talented people often through an expensive national recruitment.  His multiple recruitments included expensive ads in the Wall Street Journal and other business publications, the travel costs to fly people in for interviews and put them up in hotels, and then the multiple interviews with key stakeholders in the company. He hired great people! His problem was that he could not effectively manage the people he hired. Other managers in the organization would remark about how he hired great people and then drove them away.

He never was able to fulfill his vision or keep his talented team engaged. They either moved on to other positions or just hunkered down, did their jobs, and tried to stay out of his way. His lack of success was not because he had a bunch of malcontents who did not want to follow him and do their jobs. Had that been the case, he would not be the poster child for this article. Rather, it was his poor delegation, planning, and supervision skills–and his inability to get out of the way of his team.

It’s time to change the discussion on management and leadership and avoid generic oversimplifications! It’s not either this or that that gets the best results in organization. It’s all of the above! We don’t need leaders! We don’t need managers! We need both!! We’re kidding ourselves if we think that one is better than the other. Both leadership and management support each other. Both are indispensable! If you don’t think so, try working for a person who has good leadership skills and poor management skills for a while and then let’s revisit this topic. Having known and worked for several leaders who lacked management skills, I can tell you that they can drive you to rant or drive you to drink just as easily as a manager can who has no leadership skills.

OK, I feel better now!