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Leader manager programme™ - connecting the disconnect

The dilemma facing many businesses today is summed up in a word frequently used to describe it - disconnect. Disconnect between the vision and actual performance, disconnect between the leadership, and by inference, the led; disconnect between words and actions, between functions and silos; between leading and managing - the list of disconnects is endless.

We believe it is this latter disconnect, between leading and managing, that creates and enforces many of the others. In most organisations there are discrete tracks of development for leaders, normally people at or near the top of an organisation, and managers, typically those in the middle or nearer the base of an organisation.

The result is two distinct capabilities which, rather than offering combined capability, offer different capabilities. In much leadership literature this disconnect is offered up as a virtue; leaders create. They create vision, purpose, values, and alignment. They become almost an elite band, removed from the pressures of 'business as usual'. Rather than engagement with their colleagues, they are detached guardians of an arcane secret - what are we all here for? Many employee surveys, regardless of the amount of time spent by these leaders 'cascading' their vision, report dis-satisfaction, disconnect within the organisation from this elite.

Conversely, managers deliver. They problem solve, get things done, overcome barriers to achieving the vision. There task is to motivate, raise productivity and 'sweat the asset'.

The Leader Manager Model ©

The Leader Manager Model © proposes a way to solve this disconnect, once and for all. At its heart is a belief that there is only one difference between Leaders and Managers, the nature of the business relationships they develop and how those relationships are utilised.

Manager Leader Relationships™
Manager Leader relationships tend to be Transactional - focused on task allocation, accountability and individualisation of performance measurement. 'Have you done what I asked you?' is a typical transactional question. These relationships are needed, to create accountability and delivery focus. Without accountability, nothing can ever be surely done.

The Leader Manager Relationships™
Leader Manager relationships™ tend to be more transformational - focused on creating feelings, of responsibility, of inter-dependency, driven by shared, thought through values. This set of relationships doesn't ask the transactional questions, rather it asks 'how are we performing against the values and standards we set ourselves, as a team, community, organisation'. Leader Manager relationships™ require the thinking mind to be engaged as well as the doing skills, transforming the potential capability of the interdependent team constantly.

Goodbye disconnect!

Some Leader Managers™ ask us during coaching, 'so, am I a Leader or am I a Manager?' Our answer? You are both, in parallel. All human behaviour is situational. However, simply responding to situations by tasking, allocating and measuring does not challenge the nature of the thinking that a team brings to its work. Working collaboratively, to a shared set of values, challenges how and why things are done, which things should be done or not. In combining the task with the thinking, collaborative mindset of business relationships, nothing will be done in a thoughtless manner. Rather all work becomes a matter of collective responsibility, collating all the individual accountabilities into a cohesive, values based outcome.

The Leader Manager™, with Amazing Business Relationship capability™, is the end of organisational disconnect, offering instead an organisation ready to offer a compelling experience to its customers, partners and supply chain.

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