Project Management

Managers or Leaders? What’s more important to your success?

By David Brookmire

Interactive

Many companies aspire to develop a strong management team that can inspire and engage employees. Ideally, through their leadership efforts, they’ll create a culture where employees feel invested in the company, are loyal to its mission, and motivated to help the team achieve—and exceed—its goals. So, what’s needed to achieve high engagement: management or leadership? The answer is both. Typically, mid-level supervisors are managers who are more focused

on project management and execution. They are expected to manage their teams and functions to achieve short-term results. The emphasis is on execution of the strategy that originates at the highest levels. Companies must work hard and execute well to ensure consistent, high quality products and customer service that reflect their desired brand attributes.

As the managers become upper-level directors (and higher), they need to develop specific skills to become leaders and shift into a more visionary and strategic role, demonstrating the confidence, skills and behaviors that inspire others to follow their direction. At the VP or officer level, you should spend most of your time on leadership.

The key to success is not an either/or option. Organizations depend on both leaders and managers to maximize their victories. So, com- panies must develop the competencies in their managers and leaders to ensure their various needs are being met.

It helps to distinguish between management and leadership to see how the behaviors manifest. The chart showcases key competencies and key differences between managers and leaders in each area, includ- ing the leaders’ focus on outside-in orientation, longer-term horizons, and motivating through transformational behaviors.

Competency Group Management Leadership

Thought Leadership Analysis

Reactive

Short-term

Decision-making

Limited scope

Technical know-how

Strategic agility

Proactive

Long-term

Seasoned judgment

Apply broad perspective

Business acumen

Interpersonal/ Communications Collaborate with people

Relate based on their role

Clear and concise communicator

Create emotional appeal

Relate based on their reputation

Strategic messaging

Personal Leadership

Transactional – if you do this for me you’ll get rewarded, if not, punished

Influencer

Transformational – getting people to want to change and leading change

Inspire emotion and engagement

Team Leadership Clear roles and responsibilities

Conflict resolution

Competent team leadership

Hire and train talent

Establish goals

Achieve alignment to direction

Cross-boundary focus

Build bench strength

Achieving Results Goals are necessary

Planning, organizing, delegating and controlling

Short-term results

Goals are desired

Seek operational excellence

Establish accountability

Long-term results

Build organizational performance

Personal Characteristics Low risk-taker

Limit the choices

Maintain practices

Meet commitments

High risk-taker

Outline possibilities

Challenge status quo

Inspire trust

How to Develop Leaders Can transformational behaviors be taught? Can managers shift into

leadership roles and become more inspirational? Yes, leaders can develop more inspirational behaviors by being more in tune with their culture and followers and then deploying behaviors that foster higher employee engagement. Ronald Riggio, professor at Claremont McKenna College, determined that leaders who are expressive, match their behaviors with the mood and audience characteristics, and are sensitive to others’ needs are more charismatic. (Click here) Alex Pentland at MIT shows that with some work, leaders can develop these behaviors to create a stronger bond with their followers. And, in her book, The Charisma Myth, Olivia Fox Cabane outlines both internal states and external behaviors that increase charisma in leaders. (Click here)

27 leadership excellence essentials presented by HR.com | 02.2014

28leadership excellence essentials presented by HR.com | 02.2014

Beyond cultivating charisma, leaders must understand the external and internal environments and ensure that the work produced meets marketplace needs and that their team is following the formula for execution in producing the products and services.

Companies known for producing great leaders develop a winning approach for selection, development and retention of leaders re- quired to meet their goals. Their CEOs are actively involved in train- ing efforts, have planned processes in place that identify and develop leaders, formal classroom and on-the-job teachings supplemented with feedback and coaching, and integrated talent management systems.

For example, P&G has consistently been recognized for their ex- cellence in developing leaders over the past several decades. It starts at the top. CEO Bob McDonald gets involved in the selection and development of their leaders. He spends time recruiting, teaching and coaching for leadership. He expects his team of senior leaders to do the same, and this cascades into all management ranks. They also use on-the-job assignments, feedback, and coaching to help grow their leaders.

Another good example is Caterpillar’s LD programs that focus on LEAD, or Leadership, Excellence, Accountability and Development. It starts with an emerging leader program, which offers specific curriculum

for up-and-coming individuals who have the potential to move into leadership roles. The company has LD programs at every level, from high potential individual contributors to the top executives. They are anchored in a model that distinguishes the critical competencies needed at different levels. They also have their senior executives ac- tively participate, teaching other senior leaders in a specially designed university-based LD program. In another program, company VPs lead a session with division leaders to outline the business strategy and discuss how leadership is tied to execution of the strategy.

To maximize your successes, you need strong managers who excel at execution and oversee day-to-day efforts. You also need inspirational, visionary leaders who bring a big-picture perspective. It’s not an either/or situation—both leaders and managers are necessary players on any winning team. LE

David Brookmire, Ph.D. is an executive advisor, coach, researcher, author and authority in leadership effectiveness. Visit www.cpstrat.com.

Most progressive organizations today are using leadership com- petency models (LCMs) to outline the key skills and behaviors they want to see in their managers and leaders. LCMs provide a struc- tured framework for defining and developing behaviors that impact performance most. And yet, LCMs often fall short for five reasons:

1. Competencies pulled out of thin air. We’ve all been guilty of pulling competencies out of thin air. In one case, we had 140 top leaders in an offsite retreat to identify and vote on their top 10 com- petencies. Descriptions of each one were crafted by a few leaders based on the blizzard of Post-It-Notes around each competency cluster. Some organizations shuffle, sift, and prioritize card decks listing generic competencies. What’s missing is proof that these competencies and behaviors have the greatest impact on employee engagement, attraction and retention, customer service, quality, in- novation, safety, productivity, sales, and profits. How do we know we have the right competencies?

2. It’s a bird, It’s a plane, It’s SuperLeader! Many LCMs provide a series of behavioral descriptions clustered around 6 to 16 or more headings. What’s implied is that the pathway to peak performance is improvement across dozens of skills and behaviors, but this pathway is overwhelming and unrealistic. At best, leadership development (LD) that’s a mile wide and an inch deep moves a leader from good to a bit better. Often, motivation to develop and follow a personal development plan to become SuperLeader is discouraging and leads to little change.

3. One size fits all. Most LCMs weight all competencies and

underlying behaviors equally. Some models layer the competencies across organizational levels starting with frontline staff, and moving up to managers and executives. This SuperLeader model doesn’t account for vast variances in individual preferences across leaders or their widely differing functions. Each person is a unique mixture of strengths and weaknesses. We have work areas that play to our pas- sions and turn us on and areas that are a real chore and turn us off. One-size-fits-all LCMs don’t account for those differences.

4. The Way of the Weakness. We’re largely unaware of how we equate improvement, development, and personal growth with finding and fixing weaknesses. Improving low marks is deeply so-

By Jim Clemmer

Why many fall short and how to make them flourish.

Leadership Competency Models

Interactive

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