HUMAN RESOURCES INSIGHT

To help executives shift from a leader/manager mindset to a lead/ manage one and balance the two skillsets, here are a few suggestions:

• Use every possible internal communication channel to express the idea of balance between these two skillsets, including in mission and vision statements, company publications, firm-wide emails, public statements, and casual conversation. Use simple but effective language to describe how leadership and management overlap and the importance of balancing both. Express how leading and managing are equally honorable, how there are times for each, and that everyone should closely identify with both.

• Create regular dialogue about the issue with C-suite executives and other officers. Close the fissures in skillsets through focused coaching, training, and other kinds of support. Executives often believe their job is exclusively to lead. They need to understand that managing a process may require surrendering leadership, allowing their reports to take the reins. That’s how employees are developed. It is not a sign of weakness to hand over control — it is an act of leading by trusting.

• Make it part of the conversation at meetings and during performance appraisals. Ask for examples of when your team members led, and when they managed. Make these moments matter, emphasizing that the balance between leadership and management is fragile and requires constant vigilance at every level of the organization.

• Offer cautionary professional stories that illustrate when either leadership or management was privileged above the other, and the consequences. Similarly, tell triumphant stories about success when the two were harmonized.

• Promote the idea to shareholders and clients, pressing an opportunity to think creatively about the leadership-management equation and its value inside and outside the organization. Shareholders from Wall Street to Main Street need to understand that the organization is innovating through leadership but doing it thoughtfully through management.

• Explain the functional distinction of leadership and management to the board, describing the critical elements and noting the need for watchfulness to win its support. The board’s backing is crucial to making this part of the culture.

Southwest Airlines’ late CEO James Parker — who assumed the big shoes of founder Herb Kelleher in the wake of 9/11 — is a good example. Here’s how he responded to a question about what leadership is: c.2022 Harvard Business Review. Distributed by The New York Times Licensing Group.

Defining and communicating the mission; providing guidance as to how it might be accomplished; equipping people with the proper tools (information, training, etc.); motivating and inspiring through selfless dedication and respect for others; providing both positive and negative feedback, including recognition for achievement; and, ultimately, getting out of the way and giving people the ability and authority to accomplish the mission, with the full confidence they will be supported.

That’s a great description that includes both the high-minded values of leadership (inspiration, mission) and the nitty gritty of management (feedback, delegation, training). Successful CEOs strike this balance, and their firms and employees are better off because of it. The unattributed phrase that organizations are “over-managed and under-led” is true enough. But the answer isn’t for some people to ascend above the details to the hallowed role of leader. It takes both leading and managing, charging and charged, to strike the balance.

James R. Bailey is professor and Hochberg Fellow of Leadership at George Washington University. The author of five books and more than 50 academic papers, he is a frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review, The Hill, Fortune, Forbes, and Fast Company.