Black Belt Productivity

In today’s installment on leadership, we will talk about the differences between management and leadership.

John C. Maxwell addresses this question by saying that the high level difference is the management deals with processes and leadership deals with people. Steven Covey often says that managers focus on climbing the tree, and leaders make sure we are climbing the right tree.

In his book, The 360 Degree Leader, John Maxwell gives us these ways to move from management to leadership.

1) Leaders think longer term. Often managers spend a significant amount of energy dealing with the fire that is immediately in front of them. This is a matter of necessity. But the result is that the fire hole is pointed the hottest direction. Leaders make sure they spend time looking at the bigger picture. GTDers would do this my looking at the organization from the 30k and 40k feet level as Michael wrote about some time back.

2) Leaders see within the larger context. For most people, our perspective is based on how events affect us personally. Leaders see events from a different paradigm. They take into account how event affect the organization as a whole.

3) Leaders push bounderies. Leaders always analyze processes and try to find a better or more effective way to do things. Leaders to not accept the status quo “because we have always done it that way”.

4) Leaders emphasize the intangibles. Leaders deal in intangibles. Leaders focus on things like morale, influence, motivation, momentum, attitudes, atmosphere. The leader realizes that these things translate to better numbers and more effectiveness.

5) Leaders rely on intuition. You have heard the term “gut feeling”. In many cases, that little voice in our heads that is steering us, our conscience or intuition, is being steered itself by facts that we are aware of or our experiences. Leaders learn that many times, their intuition is correct.

6) Leaders invest power in others. Management is, more often than not, about control. Leaders give their power away. They look forward to helping good people perform better. Leadership is about releasing control, not wielding it.

7) Leaders see themselves as agents of change. Leaders desire to innovate. They want to help make positive change happen. In front of every revolution is a good leader with a vision for change.

- Jason