A lot has been written about the role of a manager and how it differs from leadership. The term management is often overused and is used to describe those people responsible for the work and performance of others. A manager looks at what needs to be done by interpreting the leader’s vision and expected outcomes. He looks at how this is to be achieved and tasks his team to do it by planning, organising, directing and organising people and allocating organisational resources.
However much of the literature is hazy in its description of what a manager actually does to achieve high performance. The workplace is changing constantly and the theories of yesterday do not describe what is happening today and what work will be like in the future. The context of management has changed and to survive in today’s competitive world the game plan has to change too. High performance from everyone in the business is essential if it is to grow and develop. It requires people to use their initiative and judgment responsibly.
Having studied many managers whose teams produced high performance one of the key observations was that …
…such results rarely happened by themselves, they were created; caused to happen by a leader who was not a mere manager.
Leaders who achieved this do not practise a black art but instead have an intuition about what is the right thing to do. That is they are unconsciously competent. This means that their approach and the skills needed to lead and develop a high performing team are readily available and can be trained. This Blog will share information about the mind set and competencies required. I look forward to your comments and reflections on this work.
