Talking about books, I recently read “High Performance Entrepreneurship” by Subroto Bagchi – wonderful book with some great learnings on entrepreneurship/management/leadership. Moreover, details on how those learnings were applied in evolution of Mindtree was a bonus!

I know this book reference is a slight diversion from the topic of blog post – but good books are our best friends, and I am reminded of this everytime I read a good book/ebook.

Thanks again.

Tanmay

I enjoyed the book and I am glad to hear that you liked it too.

Best,
Raj

Thanks for visiting and sharing your perspective.

Best,
Raj

Don’t get confused by catchy answers like “a manager does things right, a leader does the right thing.” They sell books but they have no substance. The words have different meanings.

Managing applies to the effective use of a resource such as money management or supply chain management or what-have-you. People are a resource and they must be managed like any other resource, but obviously the tools are different for each resource.

Leadership applies to people and denotes the sending of value standard messages to people which they then follow/use. Thus we say that they have been “led” in the direction of those value standards. Leadership is therefore one side of the coin called values, the other side being followership.

Leadership is not a process any manager can change. It happens inexorably every minute of every day because of the way people are. The only choice available to a manager is the standard (good, bad, mediocre or in between) which employees will follow.

For instance, the top-down command and control technique is a specific method by which to manage people . Since top-down by its nature demeans and disrespects people, it “leads” them to demean and disrespect their work, their customers, each other and their bosses resulting in very poor performance.

If you want to lead employees to very high performance, treat them with great respect and not like robots, thus “leading” them to treat their work, their customers, each other and their bosses with great respect. The way to treat them respectfully is to listen to whatever they want to say when they want to say it and to respond in a very respectful manner. Responding respectfully means resolving their complaints and suggestions and answering their questions to their satisfaction as well as yours, but most importantly theirs.

So employees follow the leadership of their bosses, whether or not the bosses realize it. The bosses leadership is reflected in the support that the bosses supply to their employees. Remember, it is management’s responsibility to support their employees with training, tools, parts, discipline, direction, material, procedures, rules, technical advice, documentation, information, planning, etc. The quality of this support constitutes the boss’ “leadership”.

I managed people for over 30 years and was able to escape the top-down approach after my first 12 years. What I escaped to proved more effective than anyone could dream.

Best regards, Ben
Author “Leading People to be Highly Motivated and Committed”
http://www.bensimonton.com