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Management Not Leadership

Mike DeGrosky

             

I recently heard someone say, “line officers need to learn more about leadership, things like budgeting.” Here's a news flash: budgeting is not a function of leadership.

Nor are planning, organizing, staffing, controlling and problem-solving. These are functions of management.

Confusion regarding the distinction between leadership and management is understandable. Until the 1980s, even experts often regarded good management and leadership as the same thing — some even considered leadership simply as a subset of management. Our understanding of both disciplines, however, has improved since then, and today experts in both fields generally agree that leadership and management differ from one another substantially.

One of my favorite authorities on the subject is John Kotter, a professor at the Harvard Business School. In his book A Force for Change, Kotter separates the functions of leadership and management simply and well. He says the purpose of leadership is to bring about movement and useful change, while the role of management is to provide stability, consistency, order and efficiency. Generally speaking, good managers produce orderly, predictable results; keep things on schedule and within budget; and make things work efficiently. Clearly, organizations benefit from good management. On the other hand, good leaders produce important, positive change by providing vision, aligning people's efforts with the organization's direction, and keeping people focused on the mission and vision by motivating and inspiring them. Good leadership, like good management, helps an organization to succeed.

But, while leadership and management both have essential roles in the function and effectiveness of organizations, they are not the same thing. They are, in fact, distinct and separate processes, serving different purposes. Management provides the organization with predictability, consistency and stability. Leadership positions people and organizations for change. The danger of failing to make the distinction between management and leadership is that people mistakenly begin to equate leadership — a process of influence — with a position of authority. And most of us in our careers have encountered the unfortunate situation where an individual charged with managing an organization has been placed in a position of authority but has lacked the ability to exercise effective leadership.

We also must remember that management and leadership represent different roles within an organization, but not different classes of people. In a fortunate organization, the same individual may be both an expert manager and a skillful leader. I hold the popular leadership press and some of its most well-liked authors responsible for the tendency to describe leaders and managers as different types of people and for the temptation to cast leadership in a positive light and management in a negative. In their 1985 book Leaders: The Strategies for Taking Charge, authors and leadership gurus Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus state, “Managers are people who do things right and leaders are people who do the right thing.” Since that time, I've seen and heard this cliché repeated so many times that I've lost count. I don't like the implications of that thinking. Does this mean it is OK for a manager to do the wrong thing? Does it mean that a leader does not need to do things right? I think not.

Bennis and Nanus were not alone. That kind of thinking was prevalent 15 to 20 years ago, during one of the most prolific periods of leadership writing ever, and the influence can still be seen today. Some of my students, after reading a year-old leadership text, came to the conclusion that a leader without ethics was only a manager! We've got to get beyond these good-bad distinctions associated with leadership and management and leaders and managers. Not only can the two coexist, they must!

Organizations, fire organizations included, need both efficient managers and inspiring leaders to succeed. Effective organizations competently budget, plan, organize, staff, control outcomes, and solve problems to achieve expected results. However, those same successful organizations also must establish and communicate a clear direction for the future, align people's efforts with that direction, and motivate people within the organization to overcome obstacles to change and transform the organization as necessary.

In most locales, the responsibility for fire management tasks falls either to government agencies or large private enterprises, most all of which function as bureaucracies — organizations typified by their formal processes, standardization and procedure. Generally speaking, as bureaucracies, fire organizations are what Kotter calls “over-managed” and “under-led.” I would suggest that as we think about what skills we really wish line officers might possess, we think about things like the ability to establish and communicate a clear vision for the fire program, the ability to align our efforts with the direction we need to be headed, and the ability to inspire people to overcome the obstacles that stand between them and the organization's strategic vision.

I'll leave Wildfire readers with a few thoughts inspired by my favorite leadership scholars: John Kotter, whom I've already introduced, and Joseph Rost, a professor emeritus in leadership studies at the University of San Diego who wrote the book Leadership for the 21st Century.

• Leadership is an influence relationship; management is an authority relationship.
• Leadership establishes direction by developing a vision for the future.
• Leadership communicates vision and aligns people's energy with that vision.
• Management establishes structure and delegates authority and responsibility.
• Leadership energizes people and inspires them to overcome obstacles to change.
• Management monitors results, adjusts plans and solves problems.
• Effective leadership brings about positive, needed change.
• Competent management results in predictability, order and consistent results.
• Leadership and management are separate and distinct processes, but both are essential to organizational effectiveness.

Mike DeGrosky is chief executive officer of the Guidance Group, a consulting organization specializing in the human and organizational aspects of the fire service. His interests include leadership, strategy, and bringing the concepts of learning organizations and high-reliability organizing alive in fire organizations. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. focused on organizational leadership. He can be reached at info@guidancegroup.org.