At the beginning of my professional career, I dedicated many years to the application of specific principles and tools linked to Lean Six Sigma (Continuous Improvement). After a few years of seeing the influence that leaders have over the success or failure of a Continuous Improvement program, I decided to expand my career and study more about leadership development.
The more I learn and experience the situations and challenges that happen in many of the organizations that I have worked with, I conclude that in today’s business environment, you must be a good manager if you want to be a great leader.
Let’s pause to review the definition of a “manager”:
noun
- a person responsible for controlling or administering all or part of a company or similar organization.
Many people will recommend you not to be a good manager but instead to become a good leader. To me, you need both. Let me explain, I believe that as a leader you need to learn how to apply practical and specific tools and principles that will help you to consistently and systematically clarify the expectations that you have of your team, these specific principles and tools could be a vehicle to ensure that the vision, mission, and values that you consider important are fulfilled. I often see that in the topic of leadership, you could fall into the trap to think that leadership is about a bunch of philosophical concepts and principles that you need to promote and practice with your team. However, I have seen that in many cases this philosophical approach falls short if you don’t use specific tools and principles to manage the resources that are going to help the team realize the strategic goals or intent that you have defined.
Let’s talk about a more practical example. You will see many articles and information about leaders’ importance in becoming great coaches, in principle that sounds great. But going a step further if you are a leader you need to ask yourself the following question:
What is the mechanism that you as a leader are going to implement to ensure that you are having regular meetings with your team to provide coaching? (the answer to this question will lead you to accomplish the goal of becoming a great coach.)
Suddenly you need to start talking about time management if you want to be consistent at trying to be a good coach (leader) for your team. Good managers are good at managing time and other resources on behalf of the team.
Here are three important leadership gaps that I frequently see leaders need to improve in which the application of a few management principles and tools could help tremendously:
1. Time management.
When I started my professional career, I had a supervisor that always seemed to be busy, which created a communication barrier between him and his team. When leaders poorly manage their time, they are simply hindering their ability to lead others.
Establishing a robust internal engagement plan with your team is one of the ways to effectively manage your time and therefore better serve them. This is particularly important if you are trying to lead global teams (team members at different locations and time zones).
Through years of experience observing these leadership gaps, I have created a simple resource that could help you increase team engagement, collaboration, teamwork, etc.
If you want a copy of this tool, please send us an email to (bbettercontactus@gmail.com) and I will be happy to share this resource with you **for free**. Just type in the email subject line: Please send me the engagement tool.
2. Talent management.
The most precious resource any leader has is their staff. Many “leaders”, are consciously or unconsciously negatively impacting the development of their team. Leaders, please STOP telling your people that they are so great that you won’t let them go. To me, that is one of the most demoralizing messages you could send to your staff. Great managers and great leaders don’t do that. They do the opposite, they are intentional about the development of their team because they want to invest in their careers so they can grow and take other positions within your team, your organization, or other organizations (including your position).
It is important to intentionally build within your internal communication process space to constantly talk about career development with each team member.
As a manager, you must ensure that each team member has developed an individual development plan so they continue to grow. You as a leader are responsible to manage that process and you need to ensure that those development conversations are taking place.
An Individual Development Plan is a great talent management tool that you could implement within your team to support their career development. If you want to know more about Individual Development Plans (IDP), click the following link for more:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individual_development_plan
3. Stablish priorities.
Leaders need to be good at managing their goals and tasks against the financial resources that they have been entrusted to manage. I was just talking to a customer a few weeks ago and he told me that he felt overwhelmed with the amount of work and challenges he needs to deliver within the next 1.5 years. But when I asked how clear he and his team were about their top priorities he couldn’t answer. He also struggled to answer how confident he was about the talent and people he is leading vs the goals he needs to deliver. In many cases, leaders inherit certain people as part of their team but that doesn’t mean that a leader has the right team to achieve his goals. So the leaders need to assess to determine whether or not he has the right people to complete the mission. If he doesn’t then he needs to act quickly. Every day that passes without having the right team to help you achieve your vision, mission, and goals you are hurting the rest of the team. Two quick management principles and tools you could use to address this are:
- Define what is your team’s mission (or purpose) and define what are your team’s Highly Important Goals (goals that must be achieved or nothing else you achieve will matter much). Along with your Highly Important Goals make sure you develop a preliminary plan to achieve those Highly Important Goals.
2. Then make sure you develop a RACI matrix against (link better understand RACI) your HIG and your preliminary plan so you can see where the talent gaps are. Then assess the tasks and the job to be done against the resources you have to make it happen. Once you have a better understanding of what is needed to complete your mission then you will be able to make better financial decisions to support your team.
In summary…
Don’t fall into the trap to think that you don’t need to be a good manager to be a good leader. I believe that both concepts complement each other. Your goal should always be how to become a better manager and a better leader at the same time. The secret of many C.I. improvement organizations is the fact that all leaders need to be great managers to perform their job and ultimately to better serve their team. When you look carefully at the organizations that originated the Continuous Improvement movement (e.g. Toyota), you will discover that their leadership model is embedded in great management practices. In my opinion, management tools and principles help leaders to be consistent between what they say and what they do. This will increase the trust and credibility of a leader in the eyes of his team and the organization.
