They Don’t Build Monuments Honoring ‘Managers’

They don’t build monuments honoring ‘managers.’ They build monuments honoring ‘leaders.’ In the context of leadership development training, when considering great leaders throughout recent history, I think of national leaders like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin or Theodore Roosevelt, Queen Elizabeth II, Angela Merkle, Dwight Eisenhower, Winston Churchill, and Nelson Mandela. Throw in social justice leaders like Dr. King and Mahatma Gandhi, and business icons like Henry Ford, Elon Musk, Warren Buffett, Richard Branson, and others. (Remember that this is a discussion about leadership, not politics.)

I have heard of these people most of my life, but I have never once heard one of them called a “manager.” Think about it, did you ever hear, “Winston Churchill was a great manager”? These men and women were and are leaders. Sure there is a lot of management in what they do and have accomplished, but I would argue that while all leaders are managers, not all managers are leaders.

Leading is hard. One hears the term, “Natural Born Leader,” but I believe that those individuals are few and far between. Most every great leader was mentored, taught, formed, and molded by other leaders. Some learn to lead by observing great leadership traits in others. Some learn to lead by avoiding the toxic traits they witnessed and were exposed to during their development as leaders.

In most of the workplaces I have seen, there are three categories of employee. There are the “Doers,” the “Bosses,” and the “Managers.” There are many levels within each category, but those three are my broad categories and all three are essential to a successful business.

Doers get the work done. They are the people who fill the bags with dog food. They clean the operating room and prep it for the next surgery. They climb poles and replace transformers and restring conductor for electricity. All these processes have set rules. A certain way to do it that ensures safety and success. They are not paid to try another way, to experiment, or to “just wing it.” It could be deadly if they did.

Bosses (aka supervisor, foreman) are there to make sure the doers perform their tasks and follow the rules. They may provide training but typically within a very defined framework that ensures safety and compliance. Again, they are not paid to do it another way, though they may have several approved ways they can do it and the authority to operate within those approved parameters.

Managers make sure the bosses do their job and take on administrative and other tasks like payroll, hiring, budgeting, reporting, allocation of resources, and more. But these additional tasks are still mostly about following a set of rules and procedures. One can be a very successful manager without ever having an original idea or asking an “out of the box” question.

Now, here is the good news. Within almost every organization there are people in each of those categories with the capacity to create, the capacity to innovate, and the capacity to inspire. Identifying them can be hard, but those are your future leaders. Find them and nurture them.

I believe that every great leader, like those listed at the start of this blog, possesses eight basic traits. Once employees with the capacity to lead are identified, these traits can be taught and nurtured. That is your pipeline to the next generation of leaders. Effective time management training for employees is crucial in fostering the leadership skills needed to elevate managers to leaders.

Over the next several weeks, I will touch on each of those eight traits. As a preview, “A Leader is Innovative” will be the first in the series. Please follow RWSmith Education, Training, and Consulting on LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com/company/87207378/) and Facebook (www.facebook.com/rwsmithetc) for a link to each post. Or one may visitwww.rwsmithetc.com/blog to catch up on past posts. Thank you for reading and please feel free to forward this to your friends.