LeadersDirect Blog

Some people think that there is very little difference between leaders and managers and that their purpose is the same - to get maximum productivity out of employees. They only differ in that leaders are more inspiring than managers. They feel that managers can only use transactional methods to motivate employees. That is, they can give them rewards. But leaders, so this view goes, can get more out of them because they can be inspiring. This view states that management pertains to material and financial resources while leadership is meant to deal with people. read more

Once upon a time, leadership meant being the top dog, the person who ran the show and provided all of the direction a group needed. This still works in simple contexts like street gangs, but it no longer applies in modern business, especially those companies that compete on the basis of rapid innovation. Here, complexity is such that the CEO can’t always know what to do. We still like to think of the leader as the person who is in charge of the group, but we are slowly moving away from the idea that leaders provide direction. read more

The answer to this question depends on how you define leadership. If the meaning of leadership is to be the head of a group, whether team leader or CEO, then maybe you’re not a leader. Not everyone can get elected or appointed to such positions, if only because, being a pyramid, there is limited space at the top. read more

When we think of Martin Luther King’s leadership, we think of his visionary speeches, the way he inspired followers on the street and everyone who heard him. Naturally, we admire people who are so charismatic and emotionally arousing in their speaking style. So, it is not surprising that we view King’s oratorical powers as the essence of his leadership. But, this is only King’s style; it is not the substance of his leadership. King was a leader because he challenged the status quo. He had the courage to stand up for what he believed, the rights of all people to fair and equal treatment. In standing up for his beliefs, he risked insult, ridicule, injury, jail and, ultimately, his life. read more

Jim Collins developed the idea of level 5 leadership, most fully in his very popular, excellent book, Good to Great, in which he described his exhaustive research to determine how some companies moved from just being OK to being great. The question is: Should we view level 5 leadership as the real meaning of leadership for the 21st century or is Collins not talking about leadership at all? read more

The view of servant leadership expressed on LeadersDirect is that the idea of serving employees doesn’t make sense except in politics or in associations where the top person is elected precisely to serve the electorate. read more

Once upon a time, leadership and management meant the same thing - the “guy” at the top who called the shots. The big move to split them was launched in the late 1970’s and early 80’s following the dismay across U.S. industry at the success of Japanese businesses in North America. The hue and cry was to replace managers with leaders. A scapegoat was needed to blame for the failure of U.S. industry to compete against the Japanese and management was fingered for this role. Since then, management has been portrayed as mechanistic, bureaucratic, overly task focused, controlling and detrimental to innovation. And leadership started getting described as liberating, empowering, considerate of employee needs and as fostering innovation. read more

The conventional view of leadership says that leaders are those people who are at the head of any group, either because they are the most physically powerful, as in gang leaders, because they are appointed by those who have the authority to do so, or because they are elected. read more