Leading people, managing things

By VICKI JAYNE

One of the amazing things about management gurus is that they can make a darned good living out of peddling what sounds awfully like common sense.

This is not to denigrate the breed. No, by golly. We obviously need them because there are some seriously silly management practices going on. The secret-squirrel approach to pending organisational change is a tried and true disaster tactic.

Then there are those distant dealers of displeasure darts - the management-by-memo practitioners. They could evidently pick up a clue or two from theories that advocate the rather daft-sounding "management by walking around." In fact, you could fill several good-sized tomes with such examples, if Scott Adams hadn't got there first with his Dilbert series.

Simple reality is that if you treat people as if they are stupid, inferior, untrustworthy or just faceless cogs in some grand organisational design, then you are unlikely to get the best work out of them. Hardly rocket science, you might think.

At its most basic level, good personnel management comes down to treating people like people. Problem is, this can be as complex and individual as the people concerned.

Which is about where the management versus leadership debate kicks in. It's not a new one, but it seems to be gaining increased steam.

Universities are including "leadership" papers in their business curriculums, major corporates such as Carter Holt Harvey are instilling "leadership" skills at all levels in the company, human resource specialists are offering customised courses to translate leadership theory into business-centred reality, and managers themselves, in a recent NZ Institute of Management fax poll, rated leadership their number one issue.

There seems to be general agreement that good management and good leadership (or excellent management and inspired leadership) are not the same thing and may not even co-exist in the same person package.

Accepted authorities such as Bert Nanus and Warren Bennis (he who likened managing people to herding cats) can reel off screeds of distinctions between a manager and a leader. The former relies on control, the latter inspires trust; one administers, the other innovates; one counts today's beans, the other is out cultivating gardens that will yield more and bigger beans tomorrow, etc.

The words themselves come with very different "meaning" baggage. While leaders are out on the ramparts stirring people's passion for the long march, managers are busy checking whether the boot supply will last the distance.

"You lead people, you manage things" is the phrase that ASB call centre manager Jim Anderson uses to explain why the 12 team supervisors in his organisation are called "leaders," not managers.

The centre is a busy one, with up to 240 staff handling more than 10,000 calls a day. Like all such centres, it is rich in data as to exactly "what" each staff member is doing. But focusing on "why" one person succeeds in doing less work than his or her colleagues calls for a gentle, empathetic and helpful approach.

Hence, there's an active in-house team leader development programme, and plenty of support for those who have been put in team leader roles.

Independently surveyed feedback from staff shows that this focus has not only helped them improve their own work performance, but has also boosted organisational morale. A good thing, given the role each call centre employee plays as primary customer interface for the ASB.

Not many New Zealand companies are as enlightened, says First Principles consultant Michael Maryan. He reckons that promotion to team leader is the most difficult task people can face and yet far too many of them are put up there and then left to flounder without support.

The trouble is, people often get promoted for their technical expertise or length of service, not because they have intrinsic leadership qualities. Yet theirs is an increasingly crucial role. Today's flatter management structures (older companies have hollowed theirs out while newer ones are typically less hierarchical) mean that productivity rests on the shoulders of front-line supervisors. Becoming team leader is therefore not just a change in job description, it's a psychological change, notes Mr Maryan.

"Performance issues are no longer someone else's problem - they're yours." Leadership may be a more "organic" or "intuitive" trait than other skills employed by management, but it can be learned or enhanced in those who show some aptitude. Mr Maryan talks of "unlocking" leadership potential - that is, not teaching it as such, but removing the barriers that stop people from doing it well. And that really comes down to personal development.

Becoming a good leader means working on yourself first - knowing your own strengths and limits, and then honing your interpersonal skills - your understanding of others' needs and motivations.

You could call it common sense of the kind that kindy teachers and parents exercise on an hourly basis. You could possibly dismiss it as the latest business psycho-babble. But it marks a welcome shift from previous management preoccupation with process rather than people, and recognition that reform of the first goes nowhere much without the wholehearted participation of the second.

Over the next few weeks, this column will look at how leadership is being fostered in different organisations - and why.

* Vicki Jayne can be emailed at vjayne@iconz.co.nz