What’s leadership management?

When it comes to management strategies, we are firm on our beliefs and behavior towards the approach we take in managing a staff. We attend classes and read books on the appropriate methods of managing a team, but what if I told you that everything you know about management leadership has been wrong all along.

When you attend a leadership class, you discuss the tools and techniques you can use to alleviate the situations, but the real issue is never address. The major issue is people. When entering the work environment you are forced to work with many different personalities. With all the different personalities, you are bound to clash with someone. In perfect world, we would all agree and get along but unfortunately, this is not the case.  If the issues you have with people are never address, conflicts arise and create big problems. When attending leadership training this issue is often over looked by trainers.

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In leadership classes, it is clearly defined that leaders have a fundamentally different task from the people they are overseeing. With the title of a leader, you are given an extra power that is linked directly back to fear from your staff.  This is the issue in leadership and corporate leadership.  If fear can be removed from the equation, staff will be more willing to communicate issues and ideas they have. Instead of looking at someone as a threat, you can be viewed as someone that was placed in the position you are in because you have put your time into the company and you are very knowledgeable. What if this was the message that employees received instead of the thought that the person who hired you has absolute power over you. It is no secret that real leaders use influence rather than the use of power to achieve goals, yet corporate America continues to run organizations as if this is unheard of. We have all these large corporate leaders attend these leadership training courses but the common worker is never invited. Why is that? Is it that magical secretes are exchanged and only the elite can understand them?

This style of management is not the way to go. We live in a world now that is so diverse that we can benefit from the exposure of different people, cultures, and ideas. Technology and global markets have given us the window of opportunity to take advantage of this and learn from each other. It is clear that the best people will not follow this style of management, they will not submit to the fear of the manager.  We need to start listening to all the issues and address them from the bottom and go from there. We need to consider everyone and see each other as equals and work together as a team with a common goal. We need to eliminate fear.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-04-12/everything-you-know-about-leadership-is-wrong

http://au.pfinance.yahoo.com/money-manager/career/article/-/15165315/15-ways-to-spot-a-bad-leader/

11 thoughts on “What’s leadership management?

  1. Eliminating fear of the leadership level would make employees more at ease while working. If people are more relaxed about work, they may be motivated to work even harder. I think the best results don’t come from fear, but from praise when a good job is done. Workers need to feel like they are important and their opinion matters.

  2. Leadership management is a very popular subject in this market. Managers need to be leaders, but not all managers are leaders and these are usually bad managers. Companies are trying to develop their employees to be better leaders. I am currently in the running for a job with AT&T for the “Retail Leadership Development Program.” This program requires employee to undergo training at their state of the art training facility in Atlanta specifically on how to be better leaders. Many companies are developing programs like these to help develop their employees to be better leaders.

  3. This post made me wonder how some people get to be leaders in the first place. Putting a lot of hours and being knowledgeable doesn’t make anyone a great leader. In my opinion a leader has to know how to inspire, encourage and also recognize his/her staff. A great leader is someone who motivates his/her team to achieve goals but also shows he/she is a part of that team and, if necessary, can step up and help do the actual work and not only delegate it. I have to agree with you on eliminating fear. A good leader does not thrive on people fearing him/her, but on people respecting and trusting him/her. Today’s leaders need to finally realize that fear does not equal respect.

  4. The article and the comments here also beg the question: who is running these leadership seminars to begin with? Fear tends to be an “old school” way of managing people and if the people creating the training and hosting leadership sessions are among this group of people, then we’re simply perpetuating an outdated management style. How do we identify the new, more appropriate leaders to start hosting trainings for the up and coming leaders of the world? I agree with the comments here in that a good leader motivates, encourages, gives credit where credit is due, and inspires people to do their best work. THESE are the leadership session that should be taught because this is what drives people now.

  5. I’ve experienced good managers and bad managers and I don’t believe all managers need to be leaders. I’ve experienced poor and great leaders within organizations and I also think anyone at any level can be a leader. You don’t need to be in a position with people reporting to you to be a leader. I think a leader should show 4 things at all time. Hope, Compassion, Trust and Stability This can be done by exploiting a person’s strengths and how they portray these areas. We should work on our relationship building and influencing skills. We should understand how we can connect with others and know that different people can take different paths to the same goal.

  6. In my opinion, a management strategy depends on the the corporate culture your company operates under. There have been times where I have felt a pang of fear when my boss “calls me into the conference room,” but under normal circumstances, I have never feared my boss or felt that he or she has complete control over my destiny.

    One way my company has chosen to train managers is by sending them to a 2 day Crucial Conversations training program. “Crucial Conversations teaches skills for creating alignment and agreement by fostering open dialogue around high-stakes, emotional, or risky topics- at all levels of your organization. By learning how to speak and be heard (and encouraging others to do the same), you’ll begin to surface the best ideas, make the highest-quality decisions, and then act on your decisions with unity and commitment.” Communication is key in any relationship, and programs like Crucial Conversations encourage open and honest dialogue which naturally reduces the fear factor in a business environment. In my opinion, programs like this are a step in the right direction.

  7. I do believe that my eliminating the fear aspect from the staff, it would be much easy for employees to work together and employees will be more effective at the work they do. I also believe that not all managers can be leaders and there in some cases there is no need for managers to be leaders.

  8. I agree with the views you are presenting. I think there need to be a balance between being a good leader and having the respect of the employees that you might manage. I have found that when leaders create fear, there is little room for innovation and imagination. People don’t want to share their ideas because they might be afraid that they will be turn down or made feel like they don’t matter. I have seen first hand in the company that I work for examples of good leadership and bad leadership and I have seen that people respond better in their attitudes when a good leader is above them. But, when there is leader who’s goal is to create fear, employees do not respond well to them, to the point that when working with them becomes a nightmare.

  9. I hear what you are saying about eliminating the fear of leadership and creating a culture that allows employees to comfortably share ideas and gives them a voice in the decision making process. In my opinion, leading by example is the most powerful way a leader can inspire their work force to achieve their greatest potential. Look at business man, Jack Welch of General Electric, and consider the strides he has made with his idea of a “boundaryless organization.” He fostered a climate of change where everyone, from the lowest line workers to senior managers, had the capacity to bring forth their ideas without waiting for someone “higher up” in the bureaucracy to think of them first. In this way, employees were more apt to work together as a team accomplishing more as a whole than what they would otherwise be able to do individually thus leading to a more productive, successful enterprise. As a result of this action, employee turnover was lowered, ethics and integrity were increased, and performance was at an all-time high.

  10. Hi.spr. I really like this article. It let me know what is the real leadership management. As what your article said, In our reality society, if you are with the title of a leader, you are given an extra power that is linked directly back to fear from your staff. This is the issue in leadership and corporate leadership. If fear can be removed from the equation, staff will be more willing to communicate issues and ideas they have. That is exactly the true situation of our “working world”. But however, i think this is a advantage at the same time. If the staffs do not fear about the leader, they will become lazy and undisciplined. For example, they may request day off all the time because they do not fear their leader. That is not good for the management.

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