There have been many attempts to determine the difference between leadership and management over the years. However, most of these are based on helping people in positions of authority identify when they are displaying more managerial behaviour or more leadership behaviour. 

We often assume that those in the lower levels of the hierarchy control and manage the situations they encounter, as managers. Those in the higher levels of the hierarchy guide the organisation, as leaders. 

I argue that to look at leadership and management through this hierarchical lens leads us down all sorts of blind alleys and propose instead that leadership and management is a choice available to everyone. 

Leadership is a Choice… 

The Cambridge Dictionary’s definition of management is pretty clear:

the control and organization of something.

For example, “Managing the company’s finances”. 

Their definition of leadership is a bit more complex:

The set of characteristics that make a good leader.
The position or fact of being the leader. 

The definitions of leadership and management suggest a choice: things can get done through me (management) or because of me (leadership). In other words, we need to think about the leadership position we find ourselves in and the most appropriate leadership characteristics needed to achieve a successful outcome.

…Not a Position

What the definitions don’t talk about is the ability to be a leader being defined by one's level in the organisation’s hierarchy.

An example of this can be seen in the work of the Centre of Creative Leadership (CCL). They looked to create a synthesised model of leadership based on all the available research at the time. They argue that the collective research suggests leadership is about enabling movement towards an end state (vision, value, outcome, goal etc) and that this is dependent on achieving three things: Direction, Alignment and Commitment. How these three things are achieved is then a choice – the leader can do this through command and control (sounds a bit like the management definition above), through leading from the front or through enabling others.  

Adopting an Agile mindset is about two key ideas. First, inviting people who want to lead to lead. To lead no matter the level they occupy in the hierarchy. Let’s break those two ideas down a bit. Second, enabling teams to do the managing of their work.

Leading in My Circle of Influence: 

Let’s take CCL’s leadership model of Direction, Alignment and Commitment (several thousand other leadership models are available) and 3 domains: organisational leadership, team leadership, technical leadership.  

We can see that within each domain it is possible to utilise the CCL model. For example, I may not be in a position where I can influence organisational policy, but I am positioned to take the lead on a particular technical matter within my team. In both cases the outcome we wish to achieve is likely to depend on my ability to achieve Direction (sharing a goal), Alignment (coordinated work towards the goal) and Commitment (shared responsibility) towards that end goal.  

So, leadership becomes a behaviour that can be adopted anywhere and can be encouraged at all levels within the organisation. This is particularly pertinent as organisation structures continue to flatten and the predominant way of achieving results is via networks of autonomous teams.

Enabling Self-managing and Self-supporting Teams:

Organisational structures are flattening for a reason. We live in a world of ever-growing customer demand, fast decisions and rapid changes of direction. Traditional pyramid shaped organisational structures are too slow to cope in this world. It would take too long for issues to be passed up the chain and solutions fed down.   

It is also no longer true that people higher up in the organisation will have the up-to-date skills and knowledge to make good decisions – those closest to the problem are most likely to know a good answer or come up with an effective solution. These are the people then who are in the best place to organise themselves and support each other to achieve results – in other words, ‘manage themselves and their work’.

Focus for Leadership and Management

Leading in My Circle of Influence:

• Our vision

• How we do the right things

• Making progress on an agreed path

• Our principles

• Our people and their needs

• Our ability to act

• Our effectiveness

• Our potential and our current performance

Management by The Team:

• Managing our time, resources and commitments

• Measuring our success

• Relationships with Stakeholders

• Issue identification and resolution

• Risk reduction

• Our efficiency

• Doing things the right way

• Process, practice, techniques and tools

A Vision for Agile Leadership

What can we take from this? For me, it means our vision for ‘Agile Organisational Leadership’ probably looks something like

Cultivating a network of collaborating stable and integrated teams that take responsibility for the end-to-end lifecycle of their work and respond rapidly to change. 

The goals of Agile leadership are therefore to: 

1. Collaboratively create the vision and goals that give teams a sense of meaning, purpose and contribution 

2. Cultivate self-organisation and continuous self-improvement within stable integrated product teams 

3. Guide and coach teams through change 

4. Develop mechanisms for mutual feedback within our circle of influence, helping to optimise all parts of the organisation 

I hope that’s useful. Now, I’m just off to lead, sorry, manage the kettle!