Diploma in Leadership & Management

Are You a Manager

or Leader?
Contents
3 Lesson 1 Objectives
Lesson Introduction
Lesson Resources: Keep a learning log
Introduction to what managers do
4 The POLC framework: Basic principles
of management
5 Who is a leader?
What sets leaders apart from managers?
6 Can you be a manager or a leader?
Why management matters
7 Poor management
8 Characteristics of great leadership
10 Key Reading Materials
 Lesson 1 Objectives
• Introduction to Leadership and Management
• Why Management Matters?
• Characteristics of Leadership

Lesson Introduction
In this lesson, you will develop an awareness for the basic differences between managers and leaders. You will
then explore the characteristics that great leaders bring to their positions. You will be able to use these
characteristics to make you a better manager with the confidence to face any challenge ahead.

Key Reading Materials

• Developing Management Skills, Global Edition Paperback – September 10, 2015 by Kim S.
Cameron David A. Whetten (Author)
• 9 Differences Between Being A Leader And A Manager
https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamarruda/2016/11/15/9-differences-between-being-a-leader-
and-a-manager/#7bd18edb4609
• 17 traits that separate manager and leaders apart http://uk.businessinsider.com/biggest-
differences-between-managers-and-leaders-2016- 3?r=US&IR=T
• Emotional Intelligence http://www.danielgoleman.info/topics/emotional-intelligence/ Culture
and Leader Effectiveness: The GLOBE Study.
http://www.inspireimagineinnovate.com/pdf/globesummary-by-michael-h-hoppe.pdf
• Leadership Core Competencies
https://www.fsa.usda.gov/Internet/FSA_File/leadership_core_competencies.pdf.

Lesson Resources: Keep a learning log

It is recommended that you keep a learning log. Get a small personal notebook that you can use exclusively for
this course. In it, you will record insights, thoughts, reflections on previous leadership and management
experiences you may have had. During key learnings in the course you will be prompted to think about a time in
your past when you observed, noted or reacted to a situation. The learning log will help to build a picture of
your growing self-emergence as a leader and manager.

Introduction to what managers do

“A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way”. John C. Maxwell
Any business or organization, either commercial or a non-profit, needs to be properly and efficiently run. The
management team has targets to achieve. Goals are to generate revenue, cashflow and maximize profits for its
owners and shareholders, and maintain corporate social responsibility. To make this happen employees need
to be productive - this requires planning. Staff needs to be trained. Customers need to be found and retained.
And ultimately for it to succeed it needs to grow!

Businesses require certain people to set the overall vision and strategy and communicate across the
organization. Others, are required to plan, organize, staff, lead and control. Which of these is more important?
The answer is that I believe both are. In fact, you can’t be a great leader without being a great manager.

Management behaviour centers on:

• gaining trust
• being accountable
• being optimistic
• being visible
• providing recognition and reward.

Leadership behaviour focuses on the staff:

• trust people
• engage people
• motivate and encourage people

What is common across all management jobs is that managers must:

Plan for their team and what they will be doing. Once objectives are set, they must then organize the task,
assign responsibilities and resources to the tasks.

Having assigned roles, resources and responsibilities, they must now lead: this is the action part - working with
your team to ensure the tasks get done.

Finally, each manager must know when the job is done, they learn to measure progress against the plan and
control the costs, quality and time of the assigned tasks.

The POLC framework: Basic principles of management

Plan:

Planning involves setting objectives and determining a course of action for achieving those objectives. An
organization’s top management most often conducts strategic planning. Middle-level managers often engage
in tactical planning. Operational planning is short-range (less than a year) planning that is designed to develop
specific action steps.
Organize:

Organizing requires managers to assign tasks to the roles, obtain the resources and allocate them to the roles,
and delegate authority and responsibility to them. Many jobs are now designed based on principles such as
empowerment, job enrichment and teamwork.

Leading/Directing/Coordinating:

Leading is the action step. You have planned and organized the work. Now you must direct your team to get the
work done. Start by making sure the goal is clear to everyone on the team. Do they have everything they need
(resources, authority, time, etc.) to get the job done? Personality research and studies of job attitudes tells us
that to become effective at leading, managers must first understand their subordinates’ personalities, values,
attitudes, and emotions.

Control:

The work has begun and now managers start to track and measure performance. Although controlling is often
thought of in terms of financial criteria, managers must also control production and operations processes,
procedures for delivery of services, compliance with company policies, and many other activities within the
organization. Each manager will have their own way of doing things. Some will be very much project based,
others will be more laid back and let the team get on with it, while others will micro- manage every detail.

Who is a leader?
Think about this for a moment, what’s common across all those business activities? Anyone have any
suggestions? The answer is People. And this includes you! However, someone must set the overall vision,
strategy and communicate this across the organization. Is this you? Ok let’s start trying to identify what a
leader does?

• Leaders are those who generally set direction, build an inspiring vision, and create something new.
• Leaders take you where you need to go to be successful as a team or an organization; and it is dynamic,
exciting, and inspiring.
• Yet, leaders must also use management skills to guide their people to the right destination, in a smooth and
efficient way.

Question: Is a picture slowly emerging of the differences between a manager and leader?

What sets leaders apart from managers?

You will find that what makes a difference is in the actual practice and behaviours of both managers and
leaders. Observe the behaviour of managers and leaders in your company for these traits. We will see how the
character of the leader is often mentioned. Their charisma - Bill Clinton had it. We see how certain leaders and
the positive effects that her character and behaviours can have on her followers.
When talking about management, focus on the behaviours of the manager in terms of the objectives of efficient
delivery of performance and the successful achievement of results. Management behaviour centers on: gaining
trust, being accountable, being optimistic, being visible, and providing recognition and reward. “Managers”
delegated largely to increase efficiency; “Leaders” delegated to empower subordinates.

Question: Can you see the difference now?

How many of you even in this early stage consider yourselves as managers or leaders? Bridge: In the next topic,
we will examine how you can learn to become a great leader and manager.

Can you be a manager or leader?

Let’s run through a couple of questions to get you thinking.

Question: So, let’s ask each of you. Do you believe you can develop leadership and management skills over a
four-week course?

Answer: Yes, I believe you can start on that journey. It may not be in four weeks but with my help I can assure
you if you continue and start to apply what you have learnt you will undertake a transformation. Here’s how.
Each day, you experience the good, the bad and ugly of how your current and past managers have treated you.
The following questions will help to explain this.

Question: When did you last feel special, when were last recognized for hard graft?

Question: When were you given the opportunity to stretch, grow, be involved in a team, a project, or an event
that had the backing of the senior executive team?

Question: On the other hand, have you experienced others taking credit for your work, the feeling of not being
appreciated?

What I’m getting at is that you're observing and experiencing the impact of managers and leaders every day. Yet,
you don’t have the time to tease out and reflect why that just happened, could it have been different.

Some thoughts:

• “Managers do things right; leaders do the right thing”.

• “Management is administration, but leadership is innovation”.
• “Management is what we need to do, but leadership is what we want to do”.

Why management matters

The most common reasons are that employees feel overlooked after they have put in the hours. They are
overloaded and their managers can’t see the impact this is having. The employee’s contribution is taken for
granted and they are never recognized nor rewarded. Managers are not in touch with how some of your hires or
promotions are driving your best people nuts. Managers not giving their people a sense of where they can go in
their careers. Management doesn't have or take the time to clarify goals and decisions.
Poor management
• Employees who do not feel valued or respected in the workplace will leave. Disrespect in the workplace
causes a significant reduction in productivity as well.
• It can be a deal-breaker when the boss doesn’t trust or empower the team.
• Management may be causing more problems than solving them. Can’t make the right decisions.
• What really affects people is their sense of how they’re doing compared with other people in their peer
group.

Many employees leave jobs when there is no upward mobility. No matter how hard they work or how well they
succeed, there are no opportunities for advancement into higher-paying, more demanding positions.
Alternatively, if a less qualified or capable team member gets a promotion, high-performing employees may
look elsewhere – especially if a former teammate becomes a manager.

Work-life balance. What drives people to resign are rigid timekeeping rules, which don’t allow flexibility to
handle family responsibilities. Money does matter but only to a point and that’s when it starts to impact a
person’s well-being. When people leave their jobs, the average boost they receive in salary is 10 to 20 percent,
suggesting that it’s one of the key reasons they job hop. 44 percent of employees—almost one out of every
two—say they would consider taking a job with a different company for a raise of 20 percent or less in salary.

Here are 3 critical factors that contribute more to the employee experience than pay.

1. Regular, real-time feedback

High-performing organizations have consistently revamped one major area within their culture: how they go
about collecting and delivering feedback. Frequent and timely feedback—offered weekly, every few days or
even hours, depending on the task—is much more effective than waiting for once-a-year opportunities to let
employees know how they’re doing. Real-time feedback allows companies to be more agile and responsive to
better meet employees’ needs. Getting feedback in this way, on a consistent basis, keeps employees invested
in their work.

Takeaway: Feedback is a major driver to influencing an employee’s experience and their likelihood to stay with
contributors to the end-to-end experience an employee has within a company.

2. Development & growth opportunities

One of the most important parts of an employee’s entire experience is having talent processes that support
their long-term growth. Research shows that one of the strongest predictors of employee satisfaction and
intent to stay is their perception of career opportunities within their company. Employees who can see a clear
path for how they can advance in the company are much more likely to be invested in their work. While formal
training or learning programs are often found within high-performing organizations, peer coaching is also one
of the most effective ways to offer development opportunities to employees today.

Takeaway: Employers need to focus on providing ample opportunities for employees to develop, including
setting a clear path of progression in their careers.

3. Investment in a positive workplace culture

When it comes to attracting talent, pay and benefits will be strongly considered by candidates. However,
especially with your higher-earning segment of employees, pay won’t keep your talent. What does keep talent
around: a positive workplace culture. These factors include the culture and values of a company; senior
leadership; career opportunities; a positive business outlook; and work-life balance. In fact, all those factors
rank higher than pay in terms of what matters most to employees.

Here are some questions whose feedback can help you validate when it comes to your employee experience:

1. Do employees feel equipped to do their work to the best of their ability?

2. Do employees feel recognized and valued for their work and contributions?
3. Do employees feel a sense of purpose in their work?
4. Do employees feel they have had recent opportunities to learn and grow?

Takeaway: The employee experience is directly impacted by a positive workplace culture, and that outweighs
pay and benefits in the eyes of employees. These are all preventable! So why can’t managers learn to treat their
employees with respect?

Can you build a culture that is appreciated by the team? In the next topic, we examine what managers are
doing on a day-to-day basis. We look to see what are the main differences between managers and leaders. We
noted earlier that to be a great leader requires us to be a great manager.

Characteristics of great leadership

1. Acts of humility, such as learning from criticism and admitting mistakes
2. Empowering followers to learn and develop
3. Acts of courage, such as taking personal risks for the greater good
4. Holding employees responsible for results

So how do leaders do it? They use persuasion.

Great leaders understand how to manage conflict and close positional and philosophical gaps. They tend to be
contextual leaders who know which skill sets to draw upon based upon the circumstances at hand. They lead
by serving as opposed to intimidating. Great leaders are masters of inspiration being able to take even the most
critical skeptics and convert them into evangelists for the cause.

They are likeable

Great leaders possess great interpersonal skills. They tend to be people-centric and understand the concept of
servant leadership. People tend to like leaders who display good decisioning skills with high levels of integrity.
While great leaders are typically very direct, they are also intuitive individuals who thrive on finesse and
subtlety. They don’t expect or need to be liked to get the job done, but realize what value likeability can offer,
where it can be achieved without comprising trust or integrity.

Humour

One of the most important personality traits for relations-oriented leaders is a sense of humor. Psychologists
and staffing consultants often cite a sense of humor as crucial to building strong teams led by people with
relations-oriented leadership abilities. People who work for leaders who can poke fun without being cruel, who
are funny without being insulting, are more likely to surround themselves with relations-oriented staff. In turn,
these people are more inclined to “roll with the punchlines". They are more likely to have flexible attitudes and
to be cooperative when the going gets tough. This helps create a congenial atmosphere rather than an
adversarial environment.

Fred Fiedler in his book “The Theory of Leadership Effectiveness” distinguished leaders who are motivated by
people, projects or power. This contingency model divides leaders into three categories. From these, we see
the emergence of two key leadership models: task-based or relationships-based leadership.

Task-oriented leaders often thrive at middle-management levels, where teams are focused on completing
assignments. Because their responsibilities are often project based, they have quick turnaround times that
require deadline-driven management.

Relationship-focused leaders tend to be more prevalent at the executive level than task-driven types. For
example, relationship-oriented leadership style works best on teams that require creative thinking and
problem solving — such as computer programming or product design.

Traditional Leaders believe power comes from their position of authority. They maintain ownership of
information. They deliver the approved solution to the team. There is a growing body of evidence that shows
that organizations with flat structures outperform those with more traditional hierarchies in most situations
(see the work of Gary Hamel for a good summary of these results).

Task-oriented leadership works especially well in environments where job responsibilities are more easily
defined and predictable. They expect employees to deliver the desired results in the allotted time.
A major drawback of excessive task orientation is a culture with low morale. Employees that are self-motivated
usually find highly task-oriented leaders to be condescending and non-trusting. Goal-oriented employees often
feel micro-managed or oppressed in a task-oriented environment.

Task orientation also stifles employee creativity. Employees that get used to having tasks and responsibilities
clearly defined for them may give up on creative thinking and flexibility.

Relationship-oriented leaders inspire employees to meet an organization’s goals by helping them feel better
about their work and stay positive about their careers. This is sometimes referred to as emotional leadership.

Relationship-focused leaders tend to be more prevalent at the executive level than task-driven types. For
example, relationship-oriented leadership style works best on teams that require creative thinking and
problem solving — such as computer programming or product design.

These qualities are not limited solely to relations-oriented leaders. Whether they’re democratic, laissez-faire or
task-oriented leaders, lots of people exhibit these traits. The primary difference is that relations-oriented
leaders use these qualities as glue to bond people together on a daily basis. The main advantage of relations-
oriented leadership is that it brings leaders and subordinates closer together. In turn, team members gain a
sense of belonging.

The primary disadvantage is that relationship building is time-consuming and not always appropriate in a task-
oriented environment, where critiquing subordinates is frequently necessary.

Great leaders are strategic thinkers who can translate their vision into an actionable strategy to ensure its
success.
Strategically inclined leaders think in terms of creating leverage, anticipating & leading change, managing risk
& opportunities, being customer focused, astutely deploying resources, always ensuring the business model is
in alignment with current market conditions, yet fluid enough to accommodate changes in market dynamics.
Strategic leaders are keenly aware of items that create an advantage or defend a weakness.

Great leaders tend to be tactical geniuses and display a strong bias to action. They understand the difference
between raw data and useful information. Moreover, they know how to leverage information and resources to
achieve their objectives. They are focused, results driven and achievement oriented.