Leadership In Management

As we looked at some of the most Essential Qualities of Leadership recently, I made a few references to things we’ve likely all seen folks with authority do that pushes a team away from them rather than earning the kind of influence necessary to truly lead. While I believe possessing leadership qualities, and being very intentional about actually using them, can help anyone in a position of authority be more effective, holding a title alone does not equate to being a leader!

I can’t count the number of times over the last twenty years where I’ve heard an organization’s senior managers referred to as the leadership team. There are certainly plenty of examples where the folks in management roles have also earned the kind of influence necessary to truly lead the people reporting to them but I’ve seen just as many scenarios where someone supervising or managing a department has struggled leading silent prayer. In many of those situations, it only takes a few minutes to identify the person who really does have influence with the team and is the actual leader - whether they have the title that goes with it or not…

When the person who’s earned the influence necessary to lead has bought into the organization’s purpose and their motives line up with that, great things can happen regardless of their title. But when that person isn’t part of the management and they’re less than an exemplary model of employee engagement, we can find ourselves with a handful of trouble!

In many cases, someone moving into a position of authority who hasn’t had the opportunity to earn influence with the team they’ll be responsible for - whether they have some excellent experience but are coming from another organization or they’re coming up through the ranks internally and just haven’t had the exposure to situations where influence is built - will be faced with some challenges! If their approach is to simply rely on the positional authority that comes with the title, they may see some short term results. But if they don’t invest the energy into earning the influence needed to lead, it will likely be just a matter of time until any positive results they experienced initially turn into discord.

Even the newest person in a supervisory or management position can take some immediate steps that will help their team buy into the company’s overall mission, and Cindy and I outline several of those in a complimentary webinar we offer called Building Buy-In Around a Clear Mission & Vision, but they’ll still need to take some very strategic steps in earning the influence that will help them lead in way that increases their effectiveness as a manager. Moving forward here, we’ll dig into a few basic things we can each do that will aid in that process!