Management vs Leadership… a fine line, but an important one

I’m not too sure where I’m going with this post – I think it’s more a ‘soapbox’ entry than anything else, but I will try to explain my thinking as best I can.

I have never been a manager.  I have managed various things in my life – people, events, itineraries, heartbreak, appointments, travel arrangements and dinner parties – but I have never held a position with Manager in the job title.  However, most people who know me, know that I am pretty capable of managing most things, particularly when it comes to arranging things!  I’m a natural planner and definitely missed my calling very early on to be a Publicity Agent, Party and Wedding Planner or something similar.

Some people were born to manage – people, that is.  Management in the workplace holds this air of prestige, which some people aspire to, others not.  I fall into the latter category.

But does it necessarily mean that those people in management positions are the very best leaders?  That’s where it gets interesting to dissect the terms and separate the natural leaders from those who aim for management purely because of the entitlement the job title brings (hereinafter known as ‘BigWigs’).

Fortunately, I haven’t had to encounter too many BigWigs and only 2 spring to mind.  I have friends who complain bitterly about their management and I’m just thankful that I have only ever had one really bad experience.  Although I’m sure that there will be more to come in the next 35 years!

My very first encounter with a true ‘BigWig’ was at my first ‘proper’ job – one at which I excelled and was promoted fairly quickly.  I was 20 and ran my own 1-person department.  I was good at what I did and did my job efficiently, accurately and with a smile on my face.  But in a customer-facing job, you will always get one.  You know what I mean.  The one client who has the ability to turn your day from sunshine and rainbows, to thunderclouds and big ol’ fat raindrops.  I’m not someone who backs down all that easily and I stand up for what I believe to be right or true.  In this particular case, I assessed the customer’s situation and came to the conclusion that he was trying to pull a fast one.  A massive fast one.  And I told him, as I would do now, that I couldn’t help him, as to do so would mean committing fraud.  Needless to say, he complained to the MD aka ‘BigWig 1’.  I was summarily called to the MD’s office to explain why I wasn’t prepared to help Shifty with his problem and I explained that the story he was telling was implausible.  What he was saying had happened to the piece of equipment he wanted replaced would only have been possible if he had been supplied defective equipment to start with and given that he’d had the item for almost 2 years by that point – at no stage before then complaining that it didn’t work and in fact, declaring on the insurance claim form that he had had no prior problems with it – I quite accurately surmised that he was to blame for the defective nature that the item now found itself in.  Mr BigWig 1 instructed me to replace the item – ever faithful to the phrase ‘the customer is always right’ – which I duly did.  When it came time to explain my department’s expenditure and subsequent insurance claim, I referred it to the decision made by BigWig 1, as explanation, who – surprise, surprise – denied any knowledge of it.  I can only thank my lucky stars that I’m a water cooler kind of employee and my colleagues knew all about the case and backed me up.  Water under the bridge.  No harm done.  But… a lesson learnt to always document everything in writing. 

Jump to 6 years later.  The only time in my life that I have been subjected to bullying.  And given that it was in the workplace, it was emotional, rather than physical and I didn’t fully appreciate at the time that it was what was happening, but I admit now that I was bullied out of my position.  I loved my job, I loved my colleagues and I absolutely loved going to work every day.  A very rare combination.  The only thorn in my side was the MD aka ‘BigWig 2’.  A poisonous woman, who took pleasure in making others feel as belittled as possible.  And she continues to do it to this day.  She would make derogatory remarks about colleagues when they were sitting in the open plan office – well within earshot - in which she was situated.  She antagonised employees in front of their colleagues in meetings.  She actively blocked my personal development path at one point by instructing my assessor not to continue with an assessment session which was due to take place.  She is conniving, sneaky and incredibly unprofessional.  She is my prime example of someone who holds a management position and shouldn’t, the epitome of a ‘Horrible Boss’.  A woman of many faces, it still fills me with dread just to think about her.  Her plastered smile, fake laugh and inappropriate forging of relationships within her employee base, making a very obvious and clear distinction between those who were on side and those she’d rather squish like an ant under her shoe.  I started out as a favoured employee, but ended up as an ant.  And I still, to this day, don’t know when my status changed.  I did my job brilliantly, I received praise on an almost weekly basis for the speed and accuracy with which I turned work around for our external clients – something that a good manager usually appreciates.  I was a good egg and loved my job.  I don’t ask for positive feedback, I am not actually particularly comfortable receiving it, but  it remains a fundamental measure of performance in the workplace.  BigWig 2 is quite possibly, the most vile human being I have ever known.  I worked with a long-term friend at this company, someone I had known for 15 years, and BigWig 2 played each of us against the other, resulting in a fallout of mammoth proportions.  We didn’t speak for over a year.  But thankfully, blood is thicker than water, so to speak, and we resolved the issues once I’d had enough breathing space away from the company.  I have disliked a few people in my life, thankfully not too many, but to my mind, it takes one hell of a lot of effort to break someone down so far that they don’t recognise who they are or what they’re working towards.  But the scary thing is that it isn’t an effort for her, it seems to come naturally. 

I had turned from a really upbeat, positive person, to one who constantly complained about my day, couldn’t seem to get motivated and didn’t really have any ‘get up and go’ in me anymore.  Poor Dave would get it in the ear every single day – it came to the point when all I knew to do was let off steam about my day at work and his was the only pair of aching ears available.  Thinking back, I feel terrible about how much I had to complain about.  It’s a wonder that he stuck around, when I was seemingly so self-absorbed in my own self-pity after a horrible day, week or month at work.  My only saving grace was a colleague, who I am proud to have been able to call my mentor - a true leader - who saw my potential and nurtured it.  She involved me in everything that she did, helping me to regain some semblance of pride in my work.  She was a larger than life personality who I am very grateful to have known until her untimely death earlier this year.  A true friend, but more importantly, one of the true leaders that I'm talking about.  I’m absolutely certain that, had she not been around to take me under her wing and had I not eventually made a break for it, BigWig 2 would have whittled away every tiny bit of self-respect I had.  I was really close to feeling properly depressed about the situation I found myself in with this awful person.  I had to put an end to it.  I had to dust off my boots, lift my chin, put the smile back on my face and get out of there.  Which I did.  In the middle of the economic downturn and against over 100 other applicants, I was successful in securing a position at a company which I knew I would, and still do, feel extremely proud to work for.

When I handed in my notice, BigWig 2 asked me for my reason for leaving.  Once again, right at the very end, still waving the flag of authority over me.  She told me it was for the company newsletter in which she would announce my resignation, which I thought was laughable, given that I’d been at the company for nearly 4 years and had never received a company newsletter.  A lie, plain and simple, although not entirely unexpected from her.  I managed to defer the answer until the day after I left the company.  I then sent her my reason for leaving in the form of an open letter to the entire management team, explaining exactly why I had felt that I needed to leave.  And I made it crystal clear that SHE was the reason I had left.  I listed all the incidences which had led me to the decision and I explained that I was sending it as an open letter, in the hopes that someone else in her team would stand up to her and pull her up on her absolutely appalling unprofessionalism and lack of management skills.  I had no expectations that this would actually be the case, but if I could just plant one seed…. Well, it turns out that I’m pretty green-fingered, because the seed was planted and I received an invitation to a grievance meeting – the first HR process which I had ever encountered at this company.  I had proposed on a number of occasions that an in-house HR function be set up, which was always rejected without reason.  To receive a letter inviting me to a process they knew nothing about was laughable.  I politely explained that I had never requested a grievance case be opened and nor would I ever consider stepping foot inside the same office as the woman again.  I had felt the most unbelievable sense of freedom the second I’d walked out of the door on my last day and there was no way I was going to go back there.

I will never forget the day when Dave looked at my ID pass for my new job about 3 days after I started – the photo on which had been taken on my first day – and he said to me ‘you look so happy’.  And I was.  For the first time in 3 years, I was happy professionally.  I wasn’t necessarily in a position that I wanted to stay in for the rest of my life, but I was out of the employ of one of the most awful people I have ever had the displeasure of meeting and I was content.

I am a leader, but I never want to be a manager.  I am comfortable being managed, as long as I am given the freedom to express myself through my work.  I don’t live with a lid on my head, preferring instead to inspect the outer walls of the box.   That’s a choice that I’ve made and it’s one that often brings me back to consider what my ultimate career goal is.  I get impatient with inadequate management processes.  I also get impatient with unnecessary bureaucracy.  I am resistant to people who are change-resistent.  I tend to rebel against a system which sets unchangeable rules.  Rules need to be augmented to fit the purpose for which they’re put in place.  If they aren’t malleable to a certain extent, they get broken.

And so around to the point of this post.  Does being a Manager automatically mean that you are the best person to manage a team of other individuals?  In my experience, absolutely not.  Does gaining a title automatically arm you with the skills, emotional responses and willingness to lead well which are often needed in positions of that kind?  I don’t think so.  I honestly don’t think this is the case.  I believe that people are either leaders or followers and being a manager does not make you the former.  A leader is an individual who motivates, who inspires his workforce and who is in it for the long-term, not just until they see how big their bonus cheque is.  They are those people whose say things like ‘how can it be achieved?’, not ‘it cannot be achieved’ – a book-open, not book-closed mentality.  They are empathetic, they have a vision which extends beyond sales targets and organisational charts and they empower their workforce to reach their personal goals in order to succeed.  The sky is the limit.

In the grand scheme of things, it’s very simple.  A manager 'don’ts' and a leader does.