LEADERSHIP CORNER

Leadership or
Management?
Why being a "good manager"
might not be the best career goal.
Don Marker

G
O to Amazon.com and search for books on the subject of "Leadership,"
and you will get over 59.000 hits. If you do the same search under
"Management" you will get more than 590.000 hits.

Is there that much more to say about management?

Obviously, there are a lot of authors who think so. Yet the more complex
and difficult of the two concepts is leadership, which may be why there is such
a significant difference between the number of people who have attempted to
tackle the more challenging topic.
In hisbookTheEssenceof Leadership. Authör Mac Anderson states:
"Leadership is a complicated topic, because there are probably as
many definitions of leadership as there are leaders in the world. That's
because a leader is a person with many roles...CEO. soldier, coach,
entrepreneur, department head, politician, teacher, minister...as well
as parent, spouse, and other personal roles. History has identified
many qualities and characteristics of great leaders, and. of course, no
person embodies them all. But the great leaders I've known, or read
about, have one simple thing in common: They have developed their
leadership styles around their personalities and their values, and in
the end, their actions are consistent with what they truly believe."
Before diving further into this distinction between Leadership and
Management consider a series of questions. For many years I have been
fortunate enough to facilitate a session at NRECA's Robert I. Kabat Management
Internship Program (MIP). now held in Madison, Wl. The subject matter of my
session includes things like board/management relations, what it is like to be
a GM/CEO of an electric cooperative, as well as various aspects of leading and

Leadership Corner | 31
managing at the senior level. Each year I ask the MIP participants the same series
of questions:
• How many of you strive to be a good manager (at any level) at work?
• How many of you strive to be a good leader within your cooperative?
• What is the difference?
If you are reading this it is likely that you either work within an electric
cooperative or with an organization that is somehow related to the cooperative
industry. So, consider the same series of questions relative to your career with
your organization.
The responses to these questions that 1 nearly always get with the MIP
groups are as follows:
• Strive to be a good manager? Nearly all hands go up.
• Strive to be a good leader? Around two-thirds ofthe hands go up.
• What is the difference? Dead silence. Alt hands down on the tables.
The MIP participants really struggle to identify the differences even though
they desire to be seen as both good managers and good leaders.
So, are there really any differences between the two approaches to working
within our organizations? If there are differences do they actually matter or are
they important?
Both literature and experience establish that there are major differences
between management and leadership, and those differences are critically
important. Over the years, I have heard several versions of how people look at
management versus leadership but the one that has stuck with me is this:
• A good manager gets others to do what he/she wants them to do.
• A good leader gets others to want what he/she wants.
Similar phraseology, to be sure, but the meaning behind them is vastly
different. A manager relies on position, power and authority to direct the actions
and/or conduct of subordinate employees. The manager is better at telling his/
her employees what tasks to do with little time spent on the why.
A leader, on the other hand, utilizes a totally different set of skills including
persuasion, communication, shared vision, values, logic and even, at times,
emotion. The leader is great at explaining why something needs to be
accomplished and then empowers those responsible to get it done. Rarely will a
good leader provide specific direction on how to accomplish the task. The priority
of leadership communication is focused on what needs to be accomplished and
why doing so is important.
In many respects, fully embracing the leadership model is much more

32 I MANAGEMENT QUARTERLY Summer 2010

difficult and time consuming than simply using the more traditional management
model. In the management model, you tell your empioyees what they need to
do. If they ask 'why'-you simply make it clear that you are the boss and they
need to do what you say. Period. That approach usually takes very little time
and the manager can make the instructions and be on his/her merry way.
Leadership though, requires a significant investment of time on the front end
of the assignment. It takes time to describe your vision of what needs to be
accomplished, and also explain why it is important to the organization. However,
the rewards on the "back end" of the leadership model are vast. When your
fellow employees share a common vision with you and truly strive to reach the
same goals as you have they can be amazingly resourceful and productive.
The day-to-day oversight of employees who share a common vision under the
leadership model is minimal. In the management model, employees need to be
directly supervised on a day-to-day and task-by-task basis.
So, will the leadership model
actually work in the real world of electric When vour fellow
cooperative day-to-day operations? Or in employees share a
fact, does the supervisor need to closely " . . .,
, „ ..., t £ common vision with
monitor and manage the performance of
his/her employees? you and truly strive to
The leadership model will absolutely reach the same goals
work in the day-to-day cooperative world QS you have they can be
and, if applied correctly, will be greatly amazingly resourceful and
successful.
Here's why. productive.
For the most part we (electric cooperatives) are very fortunate to have
employees who are dedicated, competent, professional and, in most cases.
highly driven to succeed. If provided the right sense of direction and purpose
from their "leader" they will respond in ways that will not only impress you but
make you very proud as well. I have seen this employee response in my current
organization and others where I have been and can assure you that the results
can be nothing short of amazing.
And the good leaders—the ones who inspire individuals to self-start, stretch
and achieve great things—may not be who you think.
I recall, many years ago, a relatively young man who was being considered for
a GM/CEO position. The cooperative had a very exhaustive "screening" process
for the applicants. He was eventually "short-listed" and was one of only two

Leadership Corner | 33
finalists being considered for the job. The cooperative sent both finalists to a
rather targe city to meet with a very well known and high powered "Management
Evaluation Firm" for psychological profiling. This turned out to be a day long
session full of multiple choice questions, fill in the blank sentences, color and
shape identifications and so on and so on.
When the results came back, the overall conclusion was that he really
didn't have the right personality to be a good manager. His assertive skill level
was only moderate. Of course, it needed to be strong. His "soft skills", on the
other hand, were high, but those aren't necessarily what a good command and
control manager needs. So. the job went to the other person who had a strong
"management" profile. He, of course, was crushed.
But that's not the end of the story. Because that young man, so man years
ago, was me.
What i didn't realize at the time was that I never really wanted to be a good
manager. But I did. in fact, possess ail the qualities needed to provide sound
leadership. Most of us do. Especially if we recognize what is necessary and are
willingto workat it.
You only need to look at the shelves at your local bookstore to confirm that
there has been much written and studied about management and leadership.
In one such study provided by Corporate Adventures, employees were surveyed
and asked to identify the qualities that they most admired in people they
considered to be leaders. Twenty different leadership qualities were tabulated
from that study. The top four were honesty, forward-looking, competent and
inspiring. These are qualities that we can all relate to and, for the most part, are
fully capable of bringing to our own organizations.
We don't necessarily need to be charismatic, good looking or wealthy in
order to bring meaningful leadership skills to our jobs and even personal lives
every day. We simply need to understand the important differences between
management and leadership and be willing to invest the time and energy
needed to implement the leadership model in our cooperatives.

Don Marker has been the General Manager/CEO of Sioux

Valley Energy at Colman, South Dakota since May of 1999.
He has been a faculty member of the NRECA Management
Internship Program (MIP) for the past seven years, and
holds a BA degree in economics and an MBA degree from
Washburn University in Topeka. Kansas.

34 I MANAGEMENT QUARTERLY I Summer 2010

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