At some point in the rise of the modern leadership movement, and the ensuing profit-making industry, leadership and management were set on divergent courses, with leadership presented as the brilliant star and management as the subservient drudges.
The results of this extreme focus on vision and influence are being felt globally in the form of the economic meltdown led by the Wall Street leadership who were above the mundane and wouldn’t dirty their hands with the gritty details of management.
In a brilliant opinion piece, Henry Mintzberg, Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies at McGill University, founding partner of Coaching Ourselves and author …read more

Did you know that you can’t lead if you’re a lousy manager? No matter how many leadership classes you take, books you read and seminars you attend if you don’t build good management skills you won’t lead anyone anywhere.
(By the same token, and I’ve said this many times, if you don’t practice so-called leadership skills you’ll have a tough time managing today’s workforce.)
Steve Wyrostek, in a guest post at Brilliant Leadership, has a list of actions so you can figure out if you’re a bad boss or a good one. He says “that a managerial jerk can never achieve good, …read more

I keep files of interesting stuff I read and reorganize them each year; some are deleted, but most hold their value. Today’s choices include some of the oldies.
First up is a terrific article showing why leading isn’t about “fixing people” (neither is managing) and what you should do.
“People are not machines. They don’t need fixing. Using the “4 A´s” – awareness, acceptance, ask, and acknowledge…”
I highly recommend Front Line Manager. Scott says that he is a “relatively new manager” and he writes from his own experience and efforts. He’s a pleasure to read (I’m a writing snob:) and seems to …read more

Post from Leadership Turn  Image credit: danzo08  CC license
It’s not unusual for me to come up with what I think will be a great post and then find someone else thinking about the same thing.
Last Thursday I was sorting through ‘leadership’ articles and blog posts, once again disgusted with all the references to ‘leader’ and ‘leadership’ that had little to do with leading and much to do with position.
Suddenly the proverbial light bulb went on and I realized that I could actually define my version of leadership without using the l-word (I hate words that are defined using variations of …read more