Welcome back to Unleash Your Leadership. Thank you for joining me today as we discussed the topic of leadership versus management and why you wanna work. Think about leadership first. Often when we think of these two terms, leadership and management, it feels like it can get conflated.  people often equate these two words to mean the one and the same thing.

This is why I wanted to break down and talk about what is different when we think about leadership versus what is different. When we think about management, it is really important to break is down because we always think of management as the defacto career path. It is, you know, rightly so, because the way our workplace has evolved and we have had sort of these management paths that showcase some prestige that becomes a path to get onto and grow as we think about growing and, and getting to higher levels. And so it's natural for people to think about. The way for me to grow is to become a manager. Sometimes we want to become a manager because we wanna solve problems that we cannot solve.

Being an individual contributor. However, becoming a manager doesn't necessarily solve those problems, and becoming a really good manager cannot happen without understanding how leadership plays into it. You can also think that while management has evolved, , the workplace has also evolved, and as you can know from the recent events where, uh, some of the companies are announcing that they will flatten out the organization or get rid of middle management, move them into IC roles or ask them to leave, that tells you having only management skills or be being only managers is not valuable.

Companies will always want leaders, people with highly desirable leadership skills. Being in management is a way for the company to send the information down to have a structure around which it can operate. I heard this call recently that said leadership is a state of mind. It is not a. And I love that because that's what is true.

When we say leadership, it is not a role. It is not a position, according to me. Everybody can be a leader. Not everyone can be a manager because there are not as many management roles or positions open all the time. But everybody can choose to be a leader and leader and leadership. If you think about it, and we go back to the basics.

leadership is defined as the action of leading people, a group of people or an organization. So it's a highly action oriented skill. I like to think of it as leadership is what to do, and of course there's a who associated with it, and then management is defined as the process of dealing with people or controlling people.

So as you can see from the definitions itself, leadership is action oriented, whereas management is process oriented. So I like to think of management as the how the process, how are we going to get results through this group of people? How do we steer this group of people to produce the results or impact that is needed for the organization?

So leadership is the what, and management is the how. Leadership requires many actions and behaviors to be exhibited, and this is really important because people are willing to follow leaders even if they don't report to them. That's the difference is managers have direct reports. Leaders may or may not have direct.

But people will be willing to follow them because they admire the skills that they have because they admire other behaviors or other results that they see come out of that person. So some of the behaviors that can be exhibited or that that can be seen from leaders are the following. Leaders are always looking to solve complex organizational level problems without being told to do.

they're always on the lookout talking to people, understanding the gaps, connecting the dots, and say, oh, like here's a problem to solve it. And by the way, I'm, I am the person who's going to solve it now I'm going to bring these other people along to solve it. So they're always on the lookout. They're always trying to make things better.

They don't worry about is this part of their job responsibilities or not. Or if they've been told to do it or not, they will most likely not have been told to do something. The second behavior I want to talk about is leaders have the ability to make decisions even when there's lack of clarity. See, all leaders may not necessarily be decision makers, but sometimes they have to make decisions and they may not have all the information on.

but they have the ability to figure out where to get that information, who to get that information from, and they will make those decisions and then they will hold themselves accountable for those decisions that they made. Third, leaders have the capability to build out a vision even when there is a lot of ambiguity.

In today's world, there is a lot of unknowns. And a lot of complexity around us, but great leaders are really good at breaking down that ambiguity, creating pieces of clarity that they can share with their organizations and help build a vision around them. And that is the vision that then motivates the people to work on that so they can still do it even when there's a lot of ambiguity.

They don't always need to know all the details and all the specifics, but they have certain guiding principles that help them break it down and make the path clear towards that goal. Leaders are really good at building relationships and the trust that is needed for long-term alignment. Leaders always looking to work with different stakeholders.

They're of course going to work across the organization or even across different organizations.  and they're always seeking out to build those relationships. And these are not transactional relationships because they're coming from a place of, oh, how can I help this person? What can I do that might make their life easier?

And they continue to build that relationship, build that trust, and build that network over a period of time. And that network is not where they're thinking, oh, how can I benefit from having this person in my network? . It's more about, okay, I wanna connect with this person, let me see. How can I benefit this individual from the work I do?

Number five, leaders are always seeking feedback because they know that it is really, really important for them to grow, for them to address their blind spots. And they're not shy about requesting that feedback, not just from their superiors, but from their peers. Even people who they may or may not work with every single day, or people even in positions that might not necessarily be peer, but somewhere else in the organization.

Because to them it doesn't matter who is giving the feedback. What matters is what is that feedback?  and how can I address that feedback and make myself better? This is really tied to basically the leader. Having a growth mindset and a growth mindset is one of the key things for any individual in any position to really help make themselves better and continue to beat their own expectations.

Leaders are inclusive.  and they value everyone's opinions. They don't over-index on the loudest voice in the room or the voice that is the title. They don't respond to the titles necessarily. They want to hear out every single person. They want diversity of thought around them cause they know when everybody chimes.

Include everybody in a decision making process. It's more likely to result in good decisions, better products, and more motivated teams around organizations. So they're always looking to make sure that every single person is heard. They want to empower others to go do their best work. Leaders give others the ability.

to go do things. They might give them resources. It could be resources in terms of actual physical things. It could be resources in terms of tools or applications, or it could be pointing to other people who might be able to help, but leaders give them trust. It's like, I trust you to go do this thing. Go do it.

And hey, by the way, if you need help, I'm still. . That is a really different way than working in, in working in a manner, which is, oh, can you do this? Okay, come check in with me every day on how things are going, and tell me exactly what your plan is. Leaders are more focused on the results, and they're more focused on telling you what those results they require, but they're not getting into the how all the time.

Of course, when we think about leadership skills, influencing and negotiation is always. . So leaders have to be great at that. Once they have created a vision, they need people to buy into that vision. If they're looking to solve these big organizational level problems, then they want to be able to go across these number of organizations, influence them to buy into that problem, the solution that they have to that problem.

So they of course have to work with people. This is where building out those relationships is helpful, but then there are also other ways to influence and negotiate, which is understanding what the data around you is telling you and how that data plays into this particular solution or the vision that they would want to everybody to buy into.

Number nine is that leaders are really. And adaptable. They're always looking for where the tide might shift. They're looking a few hundred feet away and releasing, okay, what do we need to be ready for? They react to things before they may happen, so they're proactive in some ways. But they're also understanding of this is how times are going to shift.

This is what we might expect. How do we start to become flexible and nimble so that we are in a better position to deal with it? And the nimbleness and adaptability can be for their own individual selves, or it can be for the group that they are. So it can go both ways because sometimes they themselves have to be flexible as individuals.

But the common thread here is that they're always looking to exp to, to check on what is coming and then react accordingly. And finally, I mean, this is by no means a complete list, but I thought I'll stick to 10 things here. So the 10 thing I wanted to talk about is leaders have high emotional intelligence or high emotional quotient, eq.

They have a lot of empathy for the people around them. They understand that what the people might be feeling, they understand the emotions, and then they. Adapt their style according to that. This is how they'll be able to work with a vast set of stakeholders. That might all be very different personalities or that might all have very different goals At the same time, leaders balance out that empathy with the humility.

because as you think about it, if you are a leader and say you have a position and you are one of the topmost positions where a lot of le, a lot of people are admiring you, they're always willing to follow you, they're praising you all the time. It can be easy to, uh, lose sight of the ground and get up into the clouds, but leaders really know that they have their two feet on the.

they know that they're good at things, but they also know that it is not just because of them, that they might be good or at something. Uh, they might have had great results. They might have, you know, had a lot of impact, might have changed their entire trajectory of a company or an organization because of their leadership skills, but they know that it was not them.

And so they don't come across as a person who's like, it's, it was all me. I'm the person here. They come across as this was all of us together. And that humility, knowing that, yes, I'm great at things, but uh, I also have the support of other people and at the same time I also need to learn other things.

That humility is really important because that ties into the empathy and how you balance. . Now, of course there are a lot of other leadership skills and we could continue to talk about it, but I just wanted to touch upon a few things here to really say what are those actions that leaders take? These are the things that leaders themselves do.

They're not asking others to do these things. They are the things that they themselves are doing, and they're exhibiting these behaviors day in and day out, and that is what people are willing to follow because they see. , this person is great at X, Y, Z, and here's what they're doing and, and this is where it creates a following.

This is where it says, okay, this person, I know this person can do this. They have built that credibility out and then they can get to do more things or they're trusted to do more things. So let's shift into management a little. , we talked about management being the process of dealing with people or controlling people.

And I know that definition really sounds not that great and sometimes, you know, uh, in many companies thinking about management is not about support managing people. It is about supporting your people and, which is great because like I said, management, I really think of it as the how it requires certain behaviors as well.

It requires that managers take certain.  in addition to leadership skills or behaviors. Here are a few things that I wanted to touch upon in terms of what behaviors managers should show in order to be good managers. And again, this is by no means comprehensive, but touching upon five things here. Uh, one managers need to set expectations of of their people and hold them accountable to get the.

If your direct reports do not know what you expect of them, what does good look like or what does great look like? It's very hard for them to meet that goal if there isn't a goal, if that expectation hasn't been set. So it's very important for managers to give that clarity to their teams and then hold your teams accountable to get those.

and you wanna make sure that if the, if the team is doing great, then you recognize them. If the person has done great, you recognize them for those accomplishment. Or if the person faltered somewhere, you help pick them back up and say, here's, here's some things that can help you get to your goals. Number two is you wanna match people to their strengths so that you can get those best results out of.

If you put a person in a place where that is totally not their strength at all, they're not going to be great at it. And there's a couple of ways to think about strengths, because most often we think about strengths as things that we are good at. But it is also things that we could enjoy doing. There's a lot of strengths-based work that I've seen done by Marcus Buckingham, and it's all about like, strengths are things that you are enjoy doing.

Because here's the thing, you may not be good at something, but if you really enjoy doing it, you're gonna spend a lot of time doing it and you'll be highly motivated to do it. So you want people who will be highly motivated to take on certain. And that is the reason why you want to be able to find them tasks that they have strength in.

Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that all the people get to choose their work all the time, and that they, they say, oh, I don't, this is not my strength. I don't enjoy doing this. I'm not going to do this. It doesn't necessarily mean that, but most of their work should be aligned to their strengths, and that is how you keep them motivated and get the best.

Third thing is as a manager, it's really, really important to show care towards your team and develop their careers because they want to grow too. Every single individual on your team is going to want to grow. They want to elevate their career. So it becomes really important for managers to make sure that they can help their direct reports.

They can show that yes, we care. It's not just about the work, but it is also about where you want to go. So give them those opportunities that will help them go, help them expand their skillset. At the same time, recognize them for their work, hold them accountable and so forth. Give your team and team members open and timely feedback.

Just as a leader seeks feedback all the time. As a manager, you're supposed to give.  very specific feedback in a timely manner in real time. This will help your team grow. This will help your team to continue to improve and get better. Of course, at the same time, a manager should request feedback from their team as well to become a better manager, but you need to be able to have that conversation.

I talked about this. If you're just too nice, it doesn't help in this situation because sometimes you have to give feedback. That might be tough to hear for the other person. , but do it based on facts. Do it with compassion, but make sure that feedback reaches the person because once they know what they can do better and they understand that this is what will happen.

If they do things better, they're more likely to do it. If they don't know, they don't know. For finally unblock your. Or help unblock your team by providing them any context, communicating organizational wide information down to them, which will help them become better at their job, help them build relationships, help them collaborate with stakeholders.

These are the things that managers need to do to make sure that team can continues to move forward and doesn't have obstacles or roadblocks in the way. , and here's where the leadership part ties in. Because as a leader, you are supposed to be, you're good at building relationships, you're good at managing the stakeholders.

And if you aren't thinking about leadership first or have not built out those skills as a manager, it's very difficult for you to then do those things. If you are not able to solve complex problems, how can you expect your team to solve them? Or how can you even set the expectations on what they should do?

If you are not seeking feedback on your own and not internalizing that feedback, then how can you expect your own team to internalize that feedback? If you're not showing your leadership behaviors and your your manager, and now you want to grow as a manager, so you need to build out other managers or other leaders, how can you build leaders if you do not focus on building your own leadership behavior?

So this is where leadership and management come together, even though they are two separate concepts. And this is why I say that managers really need to be leaders first and think about leadership first before they think about management. Because if you are a good leader, you can become a manager and a good manager as well.

If you're not a good leader, then it's very difficult for you to be a good manager.  because your team is also more likely to follow you and admire you and be motivated to be on your team if they see your leadership skills and they'll be like, I want to be like this. Here's the thing, and I wanna touch upon this very quickly.

Not every good leader may be a good manager. . It could be just that they're great at the leadership aspects, but they may not enjoy the management aspects of the people management, the career development aspects, or sometimes there are other things that come with management that we all don't talk about as much, which is, uh, managing under-performers or low performers or working with human resources, working on certain logistics around compensation and things like that.

Budgeting, finance, and all of. That may not be something that as a manager I might enjoy doing, but that is a huge part of the role. Not every single leader needs to enjoy that. There is no rule, uh, like that. And, and that's why you also see a lot of people who might have been sort of defacto put into management roles, move back to individual contributors in a very senior position because they're great senior, uh, leaders, but they may not want to be people manager.

At the same time, like I said, not all managers are good leaders or not a good manager who's exhibiting all of the manager behaviors that I just talked about may not necessarily be a great leader if they have not done it themselves. They're great at showing care, for example. They're great at making sure they, they hear the team out.

They give the team the best work that each individual wants to do. They match their strength. They're great at recognizing the team. They're great at team building. But maybe they don't know how to unblock them or they don't know how to work with stakeholders themselves. How will their teams be impacted by some of the skills that might be lacking in the manager?

The leadership skills. So this is where not all good leaders are good managers, and not all good managers are good leaders. . So I hope that helped you understand a little bit of the differences between leadership and management and why it is important to think about leadership versus management. And as you think about your career growth, the focus on leadership will always help you.

Building out those skills will always lead to something bigger and better. It may or may not have to be a management position. It may not necessarily be a title. But it'll still be something where you will get the opportunity to have an organizational wide impact. So if you have questions, please feel free to.

Message me and or follow me on LinkedIn and reach out to me. I'm happy to answer them. And if you want to learn more about leadership skills or more about management skills, building those out and what is the best way to approach them, I'm happy to, happy to talk to you as well. Thank you so much again for, uh, being.

And I will see you next time. Bye.