In my previous column, Aligning And Organising, It's All About People, I undertook a bit of a 'contrast and compare' of the differences between aligning and organising. The motivation behind this was to continue to explore the differences between leaders and managers and to make the case for why organisations are better primed for success when they foster leader-managers. My case in brief:
When Line Managers lack the hard skills of process design and implementation, the capacity to initiate changes in procedure, or the ability to write sound policy, and instead try to lead their team to success by hiring or co-opting other managers in the business to solve their problems, an engine of chaos is created. An engine that will waste resources, both human and financial, at an ever-growing rate because the leader knows no other way to solve for a problem than throw more coal onto the fire.
When organisations overcorrect in the space and neglect leadership in the drive for better managers, the result can be lack of motivation and direction. But, when leadership and management are conjoined, the process releases untapped potential. This is because a leader-manager can energise people through Self-Determination Theory (SDT) by unlocking feelings of autonomy, competence, and relatedness.
This is particularly evident when control is contrasted with motivation. This is because leadership necessarily needs people to be highly motivated so that they can succeed in times of adversity. But in management, it is largely irrelevant if people are motivated—the ask is that they perform work in a consistent way that meets pre-set quality targets. For this reason, the twin capabilities of managing control and leading motivation are needed.
Managing Control Versus Leading Motivation
Management is about organising resources and the inherent complexity that arises as resources increase: establishing and maintaining processes, procedures, and policies—creating high performing teams—and preventing organisations from descending into chaos.
Leadership is primarily concerned with effecting change. Because of this, energy and motivation are essential due to the generally high levels of inertia present in organisations or industries trying to achieve change. To break free of change inertia, leaders need to supply three key ingredients:
- Goal: establishes the direction or path to change.
- Alignment: keeps everyone on the established path.
- Motivation: supplies the energy needed to overcome inertia and surmount obstacles.
For motivation to be effective, good leaders realise, as Edmund Burke put it, that they need to 'catch a fire already kindled in another'. In other words, for a leader to motivate their followers to action, they must first grasp what animates their followers. A process that creates a follower-centric notion of leadership and facilitates greater employee buy-in because the work is articulated in such a way as to seem important to the individual.
