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Peter Costa offers his perspective on leadership and management and why you need them both.

What do you think of when you see the word “management”?

Probably nothing good.  Management seems to have become a dirty word, the antithesis of what a real leader is supposed to be.

I believe it’s time to rethink that view.  To be a truly effective leader, you need to develop a full suite of both leadership AND management skills.

Leadership is the act of setting a vision and then bringing people along with you to achieve it.  It encapsulates empathy, courage, humility and integrity.  Management is about planning, directing, organizing, and monitoring to ensure things go well.  It requires competence, diligence, and discipline.

Leadership and management are what a good leader DOES.  One without the other is ineffective at best and dangerous at worst.  A quick history lesson can illustrate this point.*

It’s almost Memorial Day in the US.  For those that may not be familiar with it, this holiday began as a way to remember the service members killed in the US Civil War (1861-65), the bloodiest and most transformational war in this nation’s history.  And while we probably spend too much time scouring history’s battlefields trying to understand what makes a great leader, there are some broad parallels between their period and ours that merit a deeper look.

The mid-19th century was a time of dramatic upheaval for the US.  Fundamental cultural issues, including slavery and women’s rights were being openly, and sometimes violently, debated. New technologies such as railroads, telegraphs, and steam power were being adopted at what must have felt like a breakneck pace, deeply affecting the economy, the nature of work, and even the very way people interacted with each other.  Immigration had surged, and most of those new people had different cultural and religious backgrounds than the existing population. These and many other factors resulted in increasingly partisan politics, as intransigents on both sides dug in and vilified each other.

Key points include:

●  Planning and administration

●  Clear vision and collaboration

●  Humility

 Read the full article, Leadership and Management – you need them both, on Linkedin.