Unlocking human power: Do good leaders need managers?

Many articles have been written about the "Leadership Premium." It refers to the fact that effective leaders achieve far greater returns than their less effective counterparts in other companies. The difference is startling, and it is one that occurs with leaders globally.

In companies where employees perceive their leadership to be effective, the earnings per share has been recorded at nearly six times more than that of companies led by less-effective leaders.

Furthermore, companies with scores in the top 25 per cent of leadership effectiveness can attain seven times more the total shareholder return over three years than those which recorded the bottom 25 per cent of leadership scores by employees.

The message is clear — get yourselves great leaders. Research shows that great leaders are characterised by five traits, or The Five Pillars of Leadership. Effective leaders inspire trust and confidence; value and champion quality and customer service; are open and communicative; hold multiple stakeholder perspectives on their business, and ensure managers are accountable for their performance.

Interestingly, the influence of leaders over company performance has been shown to be twice more than that of the managers. Does this mean that leaders matter and managers do not?

Does it imply that companies can rein back on their investments in management capacities and capabilities? In fact, managers actually contribute almost equally to that of leaders in driving the cooperation of employees in achieving shared business goals.

Organisational success

Peter Drucker, a business guru, was intrigued by this balance between leaders and managers. Born is Austria and trained as a lawyer, he investigated organisational success. He noted that while many executives succeeded, several others were "frustrated failures at managing and leading."

Drucker later observed this was because "management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things". So what do managers bring to the company at a practical level on a day-to-day basis?

Based on more recent research covering thousands of workers in developed and emerging economies over the past ten years, it has been recorded that five core manager capabilities are necessary.

These "Five Pillars of Management" are: an ability to deliver strong performance; strong people management; strong work management; inspiring leadership, and the ability to build trust.

This leads us to raise some powerful questions on the co-existence, dependency and interdependency between leadership and management.

The answers to these questions can have major significance on organisational success, in reshaping and re-engineering the curricula of learning institutes, and, more importantly to the Gulf, for realistic career and youth development.

First, managers need not necessarily be great leaders. They are, however, complementary partners to leaders without whom leaders cannot get people sourced, positioned, engaged and developed for success.

Great managers are a rare breed, and perhaps very much under-rated. Sadly, we tend not to realise this and thus not invest in best fit manager recruitment pipelines, development programmes, or high return company investments to drive managerial competencies.

Secondly, in reviewing all of this, it seems that we may not have entrusted, sponsored and invested in the right behaviour in the great halls of management learning, which are so essential to oil the wheels of industry, commerce and public services that sustain our engine's power through these challenging times.

Where are our Academies of Five Pillar Leadership, and Schools of Five Pillar Management?

Thirdly, how responsibly and rightly have we positioned our youth? What has guided our twin spirits of hope and trust in our future generations? Have we really inspired them to lead teams in the front line, as there are major needs and opportunities to transform work, lives and national outcomes?

As technologies, markets, products, innovations and communities emerge and challenge us; will we continue ignoring the power of management in these endeavours?

Finally, while we debate that managers may not be leaders, and leaders may not be managers, there is a time-honoured tradition across the world if we are realistic enough to admit it.

The writer is Managing Partner, Kenexa Middle East.