Let’s look at the difference between leadership and management. Two terms that sometimes we use interchangeably. I think that’s a bit imprecise.
What is management?
It’s dealing with complex institutions, dealing with questions of resource, organizational design, immediate goals that the organization needs to accomplish to survive in a changing environment. This history of the study of management takes you back to the onset of the 20th century with the creation of large-scale corporations in the United States and around the world. And if you go to major schools like Harvard University, you’ll find that Harvard Business School began around the time of World War I.
What is leadership?
Leadership is somewhat different. The famous definition (that we love!) by President and General Dwight Eisenhower says, “It’s about deciding what has to be done and getting others to want to do it.”
It’s about dealing with change. It’s about thinking longer term into the future and shaping an environment for your organization to be successful over a long period of time.
Clearly successful organizations have to do a bit of both to be successful for the long term. In many ways leadership is about getting people to accomplish more than they think possible in a dramatic changing environment.
We’re coming to the end of the professional football season, and I’m a big football fan.
At the end of every season, what happens?
Well one thing you know for sure is going to happen is a significant number of football coaches are going to get fired when their organizations have not been successful.
One coach once said that there was a difference between management and leadership. He argued that management was about dealing with data, like the things you can measure: how fast a football player can run, if he’s a lineman how much you can lift, how high you can leap if you’re a wide receiver.
Leadership is about heartbeat. How do I get this guy inspired to play more for the name on the front of the jersey than he does for the name on the back of the jersey.
We just saw a very famous coach who’s been with a very famous organization— that being Jason Garrett and the Dallas Cowboys— lose his position after 10 years as the head coach of the Dallas Cowboys. He had actually spent 20 years with the Cowboys organization, initially as a player, and then an offensive coordinator, and later, coach. He’s the longest serving coach for the Dallas Cowboys, (who some still refer to as “America’s team”) besides only one other person in Cowboy’s history— Tom Landry.
If one looked at the Cowboys, as a team you’d have to say as a football fan, they were loaded with talent. Individually they had a number of Pro Bowl ball players, with many of those players being very successful with yards gained, yards for passes, number of tackles, etc. They were doing very, very well individually but for whatever reason as a team, they couldn’t be brought together, so they ended the season 8-8 for the fourth time in Coach Garrett’s tenure. They didn’t make the playoffs and he lost his job.
We all wish him the best. I know he’s a great guy and a great football talent but he has taught us that difference between leadership and management. He’s clearly very good at the Xs and Os and the management part. But for whatever reason he was not able to inspire this particular team of talented athletes to be a cohesive unit that really believed they could accomplish more together than they thought possible.
It also reminds us one thing that we have to accept as leaders.
Leadership is lonely and often time the leader is going to be held accountable for how his organization performs.
We want to hear from YOU! Do you play for the name on the front of your jersey? How do you inspire others to do the same? Share your comments below.