There is a tendency to confuse management and leadership, and even think those terms mean the same. Well not exactly. Manager is a specific role, while leadership is a skill. You can be a manager without being a leader, and you can be a leader without being a manager. The manager will make sure people follow the company rules and fulfill their tasks. A leader will make sure his employees are growing and are empowered to think for themselves to achieve the desired outcome. As per Julie Zhuo, author of The Making of a Manager, leadership is someone's ability to guide and influence other people. Hence, leadership is a quality more than a job, and anyone can be a leader in their own community.
In today’s world, we are witnessing a phenomenon where being an influencer is a real job and many people are making money out of it, for which I have utmost respect. These influencers have large communities of followers who are buying products influencers use, they are going to hotels and restaurants suggested by influencers. Those influencers are leaders of their communities as they can influence opinion and lead their followers. I used the most obvious example, but here you can see that one can be a leader without having disciplinary authority over other people. However, in this book, I’m solely focusing on leaders that are in managerial positions. The leaders that have disciplinary authority and direct reports.
My management style has always been leading people rather than managing them. The question is how to come to a point where your direct reports are willing to follow you? Long gone are the times when direct reports were blindly listening to managers and fulfilling all tasks, they were given without any questions asked. That is the “boss” way of doing things that is just not working anymore. In today's world, you need to make sure that your people trust and are willing to follow you on a journey of growth. You need to be a leader, not a boss.
One of the first steps is to build teams around trust relationships and establish connections with them. That is always my first aim - I get to know my people, and I know who they are outside of work, I know who they are as a person. To achieve that, I don’t shy away from meeting them outside of work, just for a casual get togethers during pod outings or team building. I do this because I honestly believe that establishing a trustworthy relationship is a key to success. Have in mind, keeping relationships professional is vital. You are still the direct manager, and those are your direct reports. After you have trust from your people everything is much easier - from making unpopular decisions to giving them constructive feedback. They might not understand it at the very beginning, but they will trust you and will know that you have their side, and just want to help them.
As mentioned before, my leadership style has evolved very much. I would say there were three distinctive eras of my leadership style. The first one was when I was extremely friendly and trusting, which led me to being cheated and stolen from. I avoided difficult conversations and giving constructive feedback which caused me even more trouble. Those were periods where I was stretched the most. In the second era I became less friendly, sometimes even too tough, and overly controlling. Having bad experiences with trusting too much and having your employees stealing can lead to a situation in which I was involved in everything. At that time, I was a Store Manager, and I knew everything that happened in the store, I was involved in everything, and no decision could have been made without me. That led to crazy working hours, but somehow, I still managed to score satisfactory results on employee surveys and have a good relationship with most of my employees. With overly controlling managers, relationships with employees deteriorate, and I will address it in the following section. I assume, due to other leadership qualities I was showing, my team was still following me. The third phase started not long ago. My current leadership style is a combination of the first two phases. I trust my people, I’m friendly but strict if the situation requires, and I delegate a lot. I don’t delegate because I don’t want to work myself, but I delegate to develop my people. Trust me, this is sometimes more time-consuming than doing things on my own. However, in order to allow people to grow, it’s the only way. I give my direct reports challenging projects and goals, and I support them in fulfilling those. The poetic way to describe my current leadership style would be - I set the boundaries and give my people free hands to play.
Important to note, this style does not work with everyone. When we come to the development part, I’ll share some amazing examples of exponential growth, but also examples of the people who just cannot cope with this. Then the big question comes - what to do with those people? It’s normal that some people do not pursue career growth and are with where they are. If they are good performers, keep to them and make sure they stay happy, motivated and engaged as they are your stable bank. They are the ones you can always count on, but more on that later.
The development of my leadership also came with growth on the corporate ladder. I am in a position where working with my people and supporting them takes 70% of my time, if not more. Before, I needed to be much more involved in daily operations and tasks, now that’s on my team, and I’m there to support them. However, the same leadership philosophy can be applied regardless of the level.
Find out more in the book Leader, Not a Boss.
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