Leadership and Management

Or Leadership vs Management?

Leadership and management are not the same thing. But they’re not mutually exclusive either. In order to be a truly effective leader, we must also possess strong competency and capability in our respective domains. We don’t need to understand the details of everyone’s role or expertise in our team, but we must have a deep and comprehensive knowledge of the domain and environment that we operate in, and a clear understanding of our shared objectives.

In my first-ever conference keynote on psychological safety, in 2019, I introduced this graphic, based on Grace Hopper’s quote, “You manage things, you lead people.” I was making the point that management and leadership, despite often being framed as such, are not either/or: they are not binary options. In fact, management capabilities are an essential part of leadership, although there’s far more to leadership than just better management. Managers may be excellent at scheduling, cost control, prioritisation and reporting, etc, whilst leaders need to possess those capabilities, and also need to motivate, mentor, coach, take responsibility and accountability, set direction, think in different time horizons, and foster psychological safety.

Since then, my graphic has gone viral a few times, most recently on this LinkedIn post by Simon Koener. 

The graphic could do with a little refresh and update, but I think the point stands. You manage things, you lead people, and every effective leader must possess strong competencies in management as well as leadership.

Since then the amazing Elita Silva has translated it into Portuguese! 

And Filippo Poletti has translated management and leadership into Italian!

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Open Lean Coffee – Monday May 15th

On Monday 15th, at 11am UK time, we’re hosting another Open Lean Coffee focussing on psychological safety and related topics. This is open to everyone who wants to join, and you can get involved in the discussion, or simply listen in. There’s no pressure to speak up if you don’t want to. 1 hour long, on Zoom, register here.

If you’re not familiar with Lean Coffee, we discuss it in this newsletter issue. It’s an agendaless, structured, facilitated meeting. We’ll come up with a range of topics, vote on them, and discuss in turn, with time limits and voting to continue. It’s inclusive, relaxed, fun, and a great way to start the week!

Psychological safety at work:

This is a brilliant clip with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, with Matt describing the writing process for Good Will Hunting, where Ben said “Judge me for how good my good ideas are, not how bad my bad ideas are.“. Matt makes the point that it’s important to feel safe to bring incomplete, or “shitty” ideas to the table, and iterate upon them to build into a good idea. You have to feel free – safe – to express those ideas.

Thanks to Chris Baynham-Hughes for sharing this with me.

We talked about giving feedback in a previous issue, and here’s a great Sketchplanation illustrating why asking for feedback is difficult. If we ask for feedback, we might hear that we’ve done something wrong, that our work isn’t finished, that we’ve got to change something, that someone else would do it better, and ultimately, that we’re a failure (or at least that’s how it can feel). Of course, feedback is an important way to understand how we can improve, but the benefit from that is in the future, and the pain from feedback is immediate. The safest thing, from an immediate interpersonal perspective, is to not ask for feedback at all.

This is fabulous from the folks at Equal Experts. Based on the “Random Acts of Kindness” idea, they’ve put together a “Remote Acts of Kindness” website that presents you with (random) remote acts of kindness to try out. Give it a go!

I love this from threddyrex.com – if you’re going to survey your people, make sure to act on the feedback!

I shared the exciting news about Amy Edmondson’s upcoming book recently, and here is a Goodreads.com giveaway to be in with a chance of winning a free copy!

Check out this new episode of the EVOLVING podcast episode with Dr Gill I’Anson and Dr Sue Knowles featuring Stephen Shedletzky and myself, talking about emotional and psychological safety backpacks, how we choose whether to take an interpersonal risk, how leaders can enable a ‘speak up’ culture, and much more!

This week’s poem:

Fascism: I sometimes fear… by Michael Rosen

Fascism: I sometimes fear…
I sometimes fear that 
people think that fascism arrives in fancy dress 
worn by grotesques and monsters 
as played out in endless re-runs of the Nazis. 

Fascism arrives as your friend. 
It will restore your honour, 
make you feel proud, 
protect your house, 
give you a job, 
clean up the neighbourhood, 
remind you of how great you once were, 
clear out the venal and the corrupt, 
remove anything you feel is unlike you…

It doesn’t walk in saying, 
“Our programme means militias, mass imprisonments, transportations, war and persecution.”

Head over to YouTube to listen to Michael recite his poem.