... for the last 30 years, it has been ideas about leadership, not management, that have come to dominate our conversations and our bookshelves. We believe it is time to redress the balance. Leadership is about the traits and behaviors that make us worth following. Management is about how we get work done through others.1
As you read Organisational Coaching, you may notice that I always refer to "managers" and "management". This often causes grief as someone comes back with the inevitable, "we need leaders and not managers".
When did management become such as bad thing?
Birkenshaw J and Goddard J,What is Your Management Model?, MITSloan Management Review, Winter 2009, Volume 50, No. 2. ↩
How well do your staff understand the priorities of the work you give them?
The need to prioritize is often associated with junior managers. Especially those who are first learning to delegate.
"He had a way of lifting the most ordinary of colleagues to a new appreciation of their worth." (Contemporary of Wernher von Braun, quoted in Space Race by Deborah Cadbury)
How proud are your staff to be working for you and your organisation? Do they have a sense that they are doing something significant, meaningful, something worthwhile?
Imagine your manager walked up to one of your colleagues and said, "You are just so insignificant!"
Ouch! That hurts. Who wants to be insignificant?
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