Management & Leadership

Kenneth D. Lewis, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Bank of America made this distinction between management and leadership to the graduates at Chapel Hill, North Carolina earlier this year:

The distinction between management and leadership is, in my view, crucial. Leadership is about how you use the influence and trust that people grant you to define necessary change and chart the future direction of the organization. Management is about how you earn that influence and trust in the first place.

Management is how we demonstrate our competence, business acumen and organizational ability. Management is how we show that we will be fair, inclusive and trustworthy in the way we use power. Most important, the way we manage establishes the standards of ethical conduct to which we hold ourselves and our teammates.

In day-to-day operations, people will do what a manager tells them to do because he controls their paycheck. But that doesn’t mean they’ll go above and beyond to accomplish a shared goal. Without trust and loyalty, they won’t put in the long hours. They won’t take career risk. They won’t follow where the manager wants to lead.

Ultimately, people grant a manager the opportunity to lead because they have found that person to be effective and trustworthy. Over time, by managing effectively, the manager begins to earn what we sometimes call “followership.” And that’s when you begin to have the opportunity to lead. Leadership is not granted by virtue of a title. It’s granted by the people who have agreed to follow you. And it can be taken away by those same people very quickly if their trust is violated.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 08:41 AM
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