Why Managers Need to Be Reformed Into Leaders

Leaders and managers are believed to be same in the line of performing and completing tasks within the timeline. They both have the qualities that an organization looks for, but still, there is a thin line of difference between them. A good manager always manages to get the work assigned by utilizing resources allotted whereas a leader has to be a manager, who achieves the same result by best utilization of resources along with solving disagreements within the work group and finding new ways to succeed. By doing this leader gains his team’s confidence and trust.

A good leader can become the best manager, but all managers cannot be the best leaders. For instance, a manager in a production firm will be time bound and result oriented, but will never look for different way or approach to an obstacle occurred in between to have an uninterrupted result.

Leaders, on the other hand, acquire skills as they grow. Some are born leaders some grow with analytical abilities with the big pictures work areas their interests, and most importantly virtue and approach. A leader will always acknowledge his team members in a way which not only pertains to work area but also outside activities, their interests, and most important family.

Instances are there where managers may end up shifting blames of the project failure, delay or mistakes to others. A project result can go wrong due to vendors associated or plenty of other people working or giving support related to it. This type of blame directly impact and shake the customer or end-user confidence in project and organization’s brand. It will also endanger future business endeavors.

The Leader will have the clear directive regarding the project and will first build the trust and analyze the core competencies of the team. Initiating a Project will always have its pros and cons so, in order to achieve success, the leader will accomplish and learn every single detail of the existing process on the project. This will also help him in gaining team’s respect and their approach of comparing classic way and a new path.

The leader will analyze the core competencies of the team on both the methods and will differentiate best performers. A leader knows the best way to manage the team and will decide which team members will be assigned to which projects based on their best performance.

Resistance is also an important factor of leadership. As the first in line, the leader has to face challenges when altering or changing the pathway to project completion. Using a clear directive approach the leader needs to instruct the team on what behavior’s they should implement when completing a task. The leader has to teach the team how they supposed to act. The leader will first learn their way to earning their respect. Still, if there is a conflict leader response should be “If you have a better way, we will adhere to it, If not then let’s stick to the planned way. Change is not optional, it is the way of life and one should not resist till he has other ways to do it.”

This is not as simple as it looks. I was once managing retention process for a telecom, where team members resist and complain about no new retention tools being provided for retaining customers. The results were not motivating and retention performance was nowhere near to targets. I then created a mock drill and role played as one of them. We started counter questioning and replying. While in the process, we ended up having close-ended questions with lesser numbers of options. Post implementing new way, a remarkable improvement was seen in the performance. Team members developed their own set of close-ended questions and retention performance targets were achieved. So this drill starts from the day one of leaders job.

A leader needs to realize that he is not perfect and never will be. There are always new things and ways to improve. The leader always offers help to the team. If you do these chances are greater that the team will be more likely to think highly of you.

Pal, manager by mind aspire to become exceptional Leader, working and passionate about writing as simple as possible for any user to understand. Read more about management and leadership here: https://teammateaids.blogspot.in/