Leadership and Management Are Not Synonyms

First, we hope you don’t mind the multiple Missives this week. We just find these Brand Autopsy posts about Peter Drucker to be massively important. Today, Drucker describes the difference between leadership and management. So often, we confuse the two. With predictable results. Second, the Monday Missive hopes to acquire this book. It may even be necessary for us to send a holiday gift to ourselves. If so, we will share the lessons with you, dear readers, in the new year.

“Leadership is not magnetic personality … it is not ‘making friends and influencing people’—that is salesmanship.” — Peter Drucker

Peter Drucker clearly delineated the difference between being a leader and being a manager. He famously riffed, “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.” The right things for a leader to do, according to Drucker, include these ideals:

1. Courage with Character
It takes courage to practice “purposeful abandonment." It also takes character to make connections with people who are genuine and compassionate. Natural leaders do both.

2. Articulate a Clear Mission
“The foundation of effective leadership is thinking through the organization’s mission, defining it, and establishing it clearly and visibly. The leader sets the goals, sets the priorities, and sets and maintains the standards.” (THE ESSENTIAL DRUCKER, 2001)

3. Foster Loyalty
A leader must be worthy of receiving loyalty. To be so worthy, Drucker maintains leaders must set their standards high and always live by those high standards. When loyalty is fostered throughout a business, employee morale increases as does employee effectiveness.

4. Make Strengths Stronger
“Nothing destroys the spirit of an organization faster than focusing on people’s weaknesses rather than on their strengths, building on disabilities rather than on abilities. The focus must be on strength.” (THE PRACTICE OF MANAGEMENT, 1954)

5. Hire People Smarter than You
Ineffective leaders worry about their direct reports usurping them. Effective leaders don’t. Effective leaders encourage their direct reports to assume greater responsibility and to make more meaningful contributions to the business. Effective leaders measure their success by the success achieved of the people s/he hires, manages, and promotes.

6. Earn Trust
”To trust a leader is not to necessarily like him. Nor is it necessary to agree with him. Trust is the conviction a leader means what he says. It is a belief in something very old-fashioned, called ‘integrity.’” (THE ESSENTIAL DRUCKER, 2001)

7. Develop People
Peter Drucker understood no business will survive if it is led by only one leader. A thriving organization needs leaders throughout and not just at the helm. According to Drucker, “The gravest indictment of a leader is for the organization to collapse as soon as he leaves or dies.”
MM: If you are truly indispensable, you have failed as a leader.