Executive Insight: Leadership or management?

For as long as I can remember I have been looking for executives with "leadership" qualities, as if 'leadership' were the silver bullet to fix all manner of corporate challenges. "Leadership" is there nestling away in every position specification that we write for our clients. But read further and "management skills" is the other standard requirement as vital as the air we breathe.

Can you separate these two elements? Can one be more critical to your business than another?

In true consulting style I am tempted to respond, it "depends" (and maybe to ask you for your watch and then tell you what time it is!). Clearly the real response can only be given when the nature of your own business and its challenges is understood.

I can think of a particular bank in the Gulf that for many years had endured the ranting and ravings of a 'Leader'. The 'Leader' had certainly done some things right: he had given vision to the bank; commanded respect and loyalty from his employees; and never tired of championing his institution in public forums. However, under his 'reign', the quality of the loan portfolio deteriorated, the operational aspects of the bank fell apart, the employees knew not where they stood from one day to the next. The bank was in a precarious position.

Today, this very same bank, even allowing for the benefits of the economic boom across the Gulf, is one of the best-run banks in the Middle East, one of the most profitable and has one of the best loan portfolios in the region. The man who made this happen, who took over from the 'Leader' is an altogether different proposition.

His personal qualities include patience, tenacity, consistency and a good intellect. He is also a supremely competent and proficient banker. The turnaround that he achieved came through doing the basics right, following up, making sure that the details were taken care of, making sure that the right people were in the right jobs. In short, his triumph is the triumph of good management.

I do not think I do an injustice in saying that he does not come across as a man who, in time of crisis, one would follow through thick and thin. But I do know that he is a man in whom you would have absolute faith that he would get a job done.

And this is the thing about 'leadership' we (and I talk from the male perspective) all want to think that we have this quality, because from the outside it seems as exhilarating and intoxicating as a fast car or a million dollar deal. We forget that true leadership can often be a very quiet, lonely and self-sacrificing discipline. We often do not value and respect basic 'management' skills in the same way thinking it more the virtue of a shopkeeper or chief clerk. And yet good day-to-day management is vital and can be exactly what is required in a business to turn it around and to help it grow.

This is not to say that good managers don't make good leaders. Clearly someone who is seen to be a good manager already earns much of the respect needed to make him or her effective as a leader. However the additional factors that make up a leader

vision, imagination, passion, drive, ethics, character, the ability to breathe life in to a strategy are indispensable in times of change, growth, turnaround, severe competition and recession.

Thus the choice for your business, the choice between management and leadership, could seem as easy to say it depends on the state of your business and the point that it finds itself on its development curve.

But in actual fact I would say that you need both in the same way that we need air and water. What real business does not face competition? What real business does not face uncertainty and change? What real business does not operate in the long term in a period of uncertain economic climate? But I would also say that recognition needs to be given to the fact that at certain times you need more of a balance of one versus the other without ever neglecting the need for both qualities.

You need to be brutal in your assessment of your chief executive officer. Some will have the right blend of leadership and management skills. Many do not. A practical suggestion can be to complement the leadership skills of the chief executive with the day-to-day management abilities of a chief operating officer. This way, assuming that you make the right selection of individuals, you ensure a complementary blend of skills and an effective balance of necessary elements.

The writer is the managing director of Korn/Ferry International in the Middle East.