Where’s the Respect for the Management?

Do you respect your bosses?  Why are there times that you get so work out with them or dis­ap­pointed that they are not giv­ing you spec­i­fied direc­tions?  Nowa­days, there isn’t any real respect that you can find from your supe­ri­ors.  Why not?  With a fast and demand­ing mod­ern era we are in, true lead­er­ship qual­i­ties tend to fade into his­tory.  Man­agers are still every­where in dif­fer­ent organ­i­sa­tions, but there are no true lead­ers.  Why is that so?  What’s the dif­fer­ence between a leader and a manager?

A leader, we defined here is a per­son that can lead the team to his objec­tive.  He may not know the steps to reach there but he knows where the team should be head­ing to.  He has the objec­tive in mind and will clear obsta­cles with the team to get to the final des­ti­na­tion.  Lead­ers inspire their sub­or­di­nates to work hard for them.  He knows that he needs sup­port from his team to get to the objec­tive.  He influ­ences and aligns objec­tive with his sub­or­di­nates.  In order to influ­ence them, he knows he needs to under­stand the inter­ests of his subordinates.

True lead­ers are respon­si­ble for their actions taken.  He will jus­tify and defend his sub­or­di­nates for their mis­takes made if appro­pri­ate.  He has assess and taken respon­si­bil­i­ties for their actions.  A true leader will also lead by exam­ple.  He knows the best way to influ­ence peo­ple is to show that he can do it himself.

On the other hand, a man­ager, where we defined it, is not the man­ager title you see every­where.  We refer the man­ager as the work­ing style your boss employs in his man­age­ment tasks.  Our def­i­n­i­tion of man­agers is that they treat you like a resource.  They man­aged you like a resource in terms of sched­ule, account­abil­ity, risks, effort and com­mit­ment to a task.  They can be task-oriented or goal-oriented where they are just too con­cerned with the out­come of a task.  Their con­cern may be ensur­ing addi­tional per­son­nel at the data cen­tre for the server main­te­nance.  Or ensur­ing the sta­tis­tic report is deliv­ered on the com­ing Mon­day (where today is Fri­day).   They can also call you on the week­end to ask you to check your mail­box and respond to an email… Well, gen­er­ally, they do not care about your wel­fare or interests.

A man­ager may or may not take respon­si­bil­i­ties directly.  He may shift respon­si­bil­i­ties to his sub­or­di­nates if they make mis­takes.  He doesn’t lead by exam­ple.  He “out­sources” unim­por­tant tasks to his subordinates.

In this mod­ern era, it is not easy find­ing true lead­ers any­more.  Most of the man­age­ment are too con­cerned with results or get­ting things done.  The expense of hav­ing imme­di­ate results is dis­sat­is­fied employ­ees or the blinded vision of the orga­ni­za­tion.  They don’t define direc­tions for the team any­more and over­see the wel­fare and inter­ests aspect of their employee.  Per­son­ally, we’ve come across more man­agers than lead­ers.  Where they are more con­cerned about the out­come or reduc­ing risks than defin­ing the direc­tion the team needs to head to.

Under­stand­ing this makes a big dif­fer­ence in your work.  Why?  You will know how much effort you should put in for your boss.  You will know if it is worth­while to go an extra mile for the boss.  On the other hand, know­ing how your boss oper­ates brings another ben­e­fit.  You will be able to align expec­ta­tions between you and him by under­stand­ing him more (You fac­tor) thus deliv­er­ing results that he wants.

What is the lead­er­ship style that you yearn to have?  Do you belong to a true leader or a man­ager?

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