Are you leading people or are you simply managing them? Here is the difference and it can have a profound impact on your company or organization. Although management and leadership are sometimes looked at as the same thing, they can actually produce quite different results.
Management
- You tell others what to do within boundaries that are set by you or the company and then you measure the results. As long as things do not change very much you can just continue to do the same things over and over, producing the same result. This can be effective and can help a company grow and prosper. However as the manager/owner you always have to be there overseeing the store and it does not allow your employees to grow and develop.
Leadership
- You explain the result you want to produce and you give some guidance but you allow your team to figure out the best way to produce the result. You allow them to make a few mistakes and learn from them, you encourage them to come up with the answers before you tell them how to fix something. You measure the result, let the team make adjustments and continually improve the process. This allows the team to adapt to the changing business environment and the company to expand more rapidly. This keeps people excited because the are continually being asked and encouraged to take risks and grow. Most importantly it allows the manager/owner to free themselves up to continually look for ways to grow the company and mine for new opportunities.
Take a look at how you are currently running your business and your team. Are you leading, or simply managing?
Here is a great book that touches on these subjects in depth: “Good to Great” by Jim Collins
