Two Key Lessons on Leadership and Management
Collected and summarized from “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” of Stephen Covey
The third issue of the Daily Soft Skills newsletter. We take the best tips about soft skills from our favorite books and summarize them for you.
1. Leadership vs Management
What leadership is, is having a vision, being able to articulate that, so that people around you can understand it — and getting a consensus on a common vision.
-Steve Jobs
Management is a bottom-line focus: How can I best accomplish certain things?
Leadership deals with the top line: What are the things I want to accomplish?
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.
Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.
Stephen Covey summarizes it perfectly in his book “the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”:
“You can quickly grasp the important difference between the two if you envision a group of producers cutting their way through the jungle with machetes. They’re the producers, the problem solvers. They’re cutting through the undergrowth, clearing it out.
The managers are behind them, sharpening their machetes, writing policy and procedure manuals, holding muscle development programs, bringing in improved technologies, and setting up working schedules and compensation programs for machete wielders.
The leader is the one who climbs the tallest tree, surveys the entire situation, and yells, “Wrong jungle!” But how do the busy, efficient producers and managers often respond? “Shut up! We’re making progress.”
As individuals, groups, and businesses, we’re often so busy cutting through the undergrowth we don’t even realize we’re in the wrong jungle. And the rapidly changing environment in which we live makes effective leadership more critical than it has ever been — in every aspect of independent and interdependent life.”
2. Effective Delegation
“A leader is best when people barely know he exists…when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will all say: We did it ourselves.”
— Lao-Tzu, an ancient philosopher and founder of Taoism
Many people refuse to delegate to other people because they feel it takes too much time and effort and they could do the job better themselves. But effectively delegating to others is perhaps the single most powerful high-leverage activity there is.
A producer does whatever is necessary to accomplish desired results, to get the golden eggs. A parent who washes the dishes, an architect who draws up blueprints, or a secretary who types correspondence is a producer.
But when a person sets up and works with and through people and systems to produce golden eggs, that person becomes a manager in the interdependent sense.
A parent who delegates washing the dishes to a child is a manager. An architect who heads a team of other architects is a manager. A secretary who supervises other secretaries and office personnel is an office manager.
A producer can invest one hour of effort and produce one unit of results, assuming no loss of efficiency. A manager, on the other hand, can invest one hour of effort and produce 10 or 50 or 100 units through effective delegation.
But How to Actually Delegate Properly?
Stephen Covey says that there are two ways to delegate. “Gofer delegation” and “stewardship delegation”.
Gofer Delegation
Gofer delegation means “Go for this, go for that, do this, do that, and tell me when it’s done.” Because they are focused on methods, they become responsible for the results.
If you are doing “Gofer Delegation”, you are just remotely controlling someone to do the job in your way. You aren’t giving the person the responsibility, you are using them as a tool to do what you would have done.
By doing this, you are preventing the person from growing, learning, and getting better by experiencing whatever the job is.
You are preventing the person from introducing new and innovative ways, which could lead to more efficient work when that person is responsible for the job.
You are not acknowledging that person’s capability to contribute. You lose the chance of benefiting and learning from that person’s problem-solving abilities, creativity, and unique perspective that they bring to the table.
Because you are focused on methods instead of the people, you become responsible for the results.
How much does this way of delegation really accomplish or how many people is it possible to supervise or manage when you have to be involved in every move they make?
There’s a much better way, a more effective way to delegate to other people. And it’s based on a paradigm of appreciation of the self-awareness, the imagination, the conscience, and the free will of other people.
Stewardship Delegation
Stewardship delegation is focused on results instead of methods. It gives people a choice of method and makes them responsible for results. It takes more time in the beginning, but it’s time well invested.
But you can’t just make someone responsible and leave them completely by themselves too. You need to properly supervise them. You shouldn’t take complete control of the job but you can’t give complete control to someone else either.
So how do you supervise or manage people in a way that doesn’t prevent them from growing, truly contributing, and leaves you more time to supervise or manage other people too?
Stewardship delegation accomplishes this by involving clear, up-front mutual understanding and commitment regarding expectations in five areas.
1. Desired Results
Create a clear, mutual understanding of what needs to be accomplished, focusing on what, not how; results, not methods. Spend time. Be patient. Visualize the desired result. Have the person see it, describe it, make out a quality statement of what the results will look like, and by when they will be accomplished.
2. Guidelines
Identify the parameters within which the individual should operate. These should be as few as possible to avoid methods delegation but should include any formidable restrictions. You won’t want a person to think he had considerable latitude as long as he accomplished the objectives, only to violate some long-standing traditional practice or value. That kills initiative and sends people back to the gofer’s creed: “Just tell me what you want me to do, and I’ll do it.” If you know the failure paths of the job, identify them. Be honest and open — tell a person where the quicksand is and where the wild animals are. You don’t want to have to reinvent the wheel every day. Let people learn from your mistakes or the mistakes of others. Point out the potential failure paths, what not to do, but don’t tell them what to do. Keep the responsibility for results with them — to do whatever is necessary within the guidelines.
3. Resources:
Identify the human, financial, technical, or organizational resources the person can draw on to accomplish the desired results.
4. Accountability
Set up the standards of performance that will be used in evaluating the results and the specific times when reporting and evaluation will take place.
5. Consequences
Specify what will happen, both good and bad, as a result of the evaluation. This could include such things as financial rewards, psychic rewards, different job assignments, and natural consequences tied into the overall mission of an organization.
The principles involved in stewardship delegation are correct and applicable to any kind of person or situation. With immature people, you specify fewer desired results and more guidelines, identify more resources, conduct more frequent accountability interviews, and apply more immediate consequences. With more mature people, you have more challenging desired results, fewer guidelines, less frequent accountability, and less measurable but more discernible criteria.
Effective delegation is perhaps the best indicator of effective management simply because it is so basic to both personal and organizational growth.
Practice Recommendation:
Make a list of responsibilities you could delegate and the people you could delegate to or train to be responsible in these areas. Determine what is needed to start the process of delegation or training.
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