Observations on Management and Leadership

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Observations on Management and Leadership

Glenn G. Loveland

 

The following presents my orientations toward the study and the practice of leadership. I tend to equate leadership and management, however, analytically, while all management is leadership, not all leadership is management. To concretely state my orientations, the following might well sum it up: 1) Management is primarily a moral pursuit and, therefore, is Value-laden (this to the extent and degree that every manager ought aspire to being a "philosopher-king"; 2) Management is much more art than science; 3) A manager's understanding of him/herself and of the human condition/situation is his/her primary tool and vehicle; 4) Mankind's systems for developing, selecting and elevating managers/leaders tend to favor the more neurotic and power-oriented among the group, this at the expense of and detriment to the group itself and the TRUE potential leaders in its midst. This aspect is primarily due to mankind's basic insecurities and weak ego functioning, which, as Drucker observes, favors manner over substance, show over reality.

1) What ARE the personality/character traits of "true" leaders?; 2) What sorts of social systems have been developed in the past, and what sorts could be developed now, which would enable the group to utilize "true" leaders?, and; 3) How can the group nurture and develop more "true" leaders?

Same of the fascinating sub-sets (to me, at least) of the above relate to the argument as to whether leadership evolves from "greatness", as in the "great man" or "hero" orientation, or whether the primary reality is that certain people are able to rise to the occasion, as is often held of Churchill and Truman, for example. Also, all of the above leads to a powerful curiosity regarding just WHERE our current bureaupathological careerist orientation is taking us as a society. Such matters clearly relate to the macro orientations of functionalist and conflict theories within sociology.

As regards the interactionist, or micro theoretical orientation, areas of interest include the forms and sorts of "performances" (Goffman) a manager/leader engages in. Here, my orientation is that a manager/leader must do such--in many ways "inventing him/herself" in a real-life drama, but that such creations must be truly a part/parcel of the self/personality of the actor. In management development/training, for instance, I counsel that a manager may adopt many performances, all of which might achieve the desired result, but that the manager cannot "sell" any performance which is not a true part of him/herself, one which is totally imagined and "made out of whole cloth."

Following is a favored collection of quotes, including and concluding with some of y further thoughts, regarding management and leadership.

 

Man is not unique because he does science, and he is unique not because he does art, but because science and art equally are expressions of his marvelous plasticity of mind.

We are nature's unique experiment to make the rational intelligence prove itself sounder than the reflex. Knowledge is our destiny. Self-knowledge, at last bringing together the experience of the arts and the explanations of science, waits ahead of us.

Knowledge is not a loose-leaf notebook of facts. Above all, it is a responsibility for the integrity of what we are, primarily of what we are as ethical creatures. The personal commitment of a man to his skill, the intellectual commitment and the emotional equipment working together as one, has made the Ascent of Man.

Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man

 

The ones who have been successful thought through what the job was that really had to be done instead of having a program. . . . It is the willingness to say, "What is the assignment?"--not "What do I want to do?" but "What has to be done?" It's a certain demanding of oneself a very high standard, and it's a creation of trust. . . . Leaders have a goal, and the goal is not what they want to do. They start out with the question, "What is needed?" I'm dubious about all this chatter about leadership because what people really want is somebody who substitutes manner for substance.

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Peter Drucker in Bill Moyers, A World of Ideas, pages 404-405

 

[T]he human factors [are] the real stuff of management.

Theories of management can work in individual companies--but only because they suit the way in which individual men like to act.

But just as no two chefs run their kitchens the same way, no two managers are the same, even if they all went to the same business (or cookery) school. You can teach the rudiments of cooking, as of management, but you can't make a great cook or a great manager. In both activities, you ignore fundamentals ...

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