“The difference between good and
great, is just this much,” a quote from one of my previous commander. Leadership
and management are often intertwined with one another and sometimes confused.
While I’m still learning to differentiate the two, I’ll start out by explaining
what I see in leadership, what I see in management, and how I see the two
working hand in hand.
Leadership can be thought of as
inspiring people into doing what they want to do. Simon Sinek’s TED talk
explained this as being the “why” of something. (Sinek, 2010) For example one might say, “Our
ground troops are taking heavy fire and only our jets are fast enough to save
them.” This phrase alone will cause maintainers to feel the need to do
something and act. There’s a quote in Yukl’s book, “leaders are people who do
the right thing” as opposed to doing things right. (Gary, 2013)
Giving people meaning in what they do gives them a sense of ownership over their
actions. They don’t act because someone tells them too, they act because they
want to.
Management can be thought of as
getting the job done. In Yukl’s book a quote mentions that “managers are people
who do things right” as opposed to doing the right thing. Figuring out what it
takes and what resources to get the job done. In the realm of military aircraft
maintenance, the expediter is often seen as a manager. They assign jobs to
troops and tell them to fix it. Management isn’t so much about the “why’s,” but
the “what’s” and “how’s.”
Tying the two together, leadership
and management, is what creates greatness in a society. Simon Sinek explained
that when trying to sell something to people, you must start with the “why”
they need to do something followed by the “what” it is they have to do. (Sinek, 2010) Going
the other way around and people lose interest because they no longer take
ownership in the particular vision. One of my old commanders always said in his
role calls, “the difference between good and great, is just this much,” as he
holds up his hand to show the difference is less than an inch. Everyone is
already good at their jobs and do good work, but in order to achieve greatness,
all they have to do is put forth just that little bit of extra effort. Jets
were breaking left and right and we had a mission to get done. By inspiring us
to achieve greatness, we all took ownership in such vision and put forth that
little bit of effort to achieve what needed to be achieved.
There is still a lot to learn, but
this was my basic idea of the differences between leadership and management.
The two are different in their own ways, but it takes the two to actually be
effective in doing grand things. The next question then becomes, how doing I
put this into practice with what I’m going now?
References
Gary, Y. (2013). Leadership in Organizations.
Ney jersey: Pearson.
Sinek, S. (2010). TED. Retrieved from YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4ZoJKF_VuA&feature=share&list=PL42F8562DCD3CCEA8
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