AREAS OF FOCUS: LEADERSHIP VS MANAGEMENT

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http://blog.readytomanage.com/category/leadership-management

Strengthening Your Leadership Pipeline

July 27, 2012 by Dr. Jon Warner

The CEO cannot achieve the goals of the organization on his or her own.  Something must be done to help operational and functional leaders at all levels to learn new skills and behavior.  To develop leaders, many organizations have a single leadership development approach with a pre-defined set of skills that are deemed to be most relevant.  An effective leadership pipeline should be a bit like a chain; solid and with strong links throughout.  The length of the chain should be kept relatively short.  Most effort is needed at the link points or when people transition from one “tier” of the pipeline to the next.

There are five very different, discrete, and almost non-overlapping levels or tiers in an organization.  Leadership development is a progressive journey for an individual who slowly builds skills and new behaviors and works their way as far towards the top.  Leadership is very different from management.  The key areas of focus and responsibility at each career tier are as follows:

THE CAREER ELEVATOR

KEY AREAS OF FOCUS AND RESPONSIBILITY AT EACH CAREER TIER

Career Tier	Leadership areas of focus	Management areas of focus
Tier 1 Self-Management	Build personal self-esteem Know yourself/self-awareness Appreciate strengths/ development needs Become Learning/Discovery centered Develop personal emotional intelligence	Plan schedule tasks and people Organize/coordinate self and others Manage time and personal stress Set personal goals and measure progress Guide/Coach peers and colleagues
Tier 2 Team Management	Manage people Delegate/assign work tasks/projects Identify/remove progress roadblocks Suggest alternative courses of action Offer and seek feedback	Analyze and interpolate data Separate facts from assumptions Break down/understand process flows Manage other people’s pressure/stress Plan work for/organize the team
Tier 3 Multi-Process Management	Develop warm/empathetic relationships Empower people Manage individual/team conflicts Negotiate Reflect more deeply	Develop functional knowledge Develop deep process/quality knowledge Evolve problem-solving approaches Deal with ambiguity Juggle competing priorities to set goals
Tier 4 Unit/Departmental Management	Evolve critical thinking skills Focus on customers/service issues Ask insightful questions Manage/Optimize peer relationships Manage Change	Evolve unit business knowledge Develop financial acumen Calculate commercial payoffs of projects Manage complex projects Be decisive after due consideration
Tier 5 Whole Business Management	Think ahead/ anticipate events/change Develop future visions Evolve creativity/innovation approach Communicate in/out of the organization Develop key people and teams	Evolve judgment/perception skills Manage risk Develop strategy and broad tactics Select from alternative courses of action Plan contingencies/fall-back positions

The 5 Tiers within the Career Elevator Model

Tier 1 – Knowing and Managing Yourself

• If we can’t manage ourselves well, how can we expect to manage others successfully?
• It’s all about the leader discovering ways to increase personal flexibility, listen more attentively and make sensible choices when it comes to the use of personal time.

Tier 2 – Managing People and Processes

• Individuals therefore have to be better communicators and start to recognize the relative strengths and weaknesses of team members and use this information to then plan and organize tasks and projects intelligently.
• learning to perform well at this tier can take some people many years, with many leaders not being willing or able to go any further in managerial progression terms.

Tier 3 – Managing Operations and Multiple Processes

• Leaders at this tier have to learn how to problem-solve, negotiate and deal with work and people conflicts in sensible and credible ways.
• Given their functional knowledge may be low to start with, this can take a lot of time, effort and focused energy to build expertise quickly, mainly by talking openly with people.

Tier 4 – Managing a whole unit or department in tactical terms

• The key skill sets here are critical thinking and evolving an ability to ask searching questions, and to do so when things don’t go to plan or significant change comes along.

Tier 5 – Strategically leading a whole business or organization

• At this level, communication is both across the whole organization and also with many external stakeholder organizations and the leader has to use considerable judgment about what is likely to affect his or her organization, positively or negatively and make, then communicate, the necessary adjustments, well ahead of time.