There’s a lot of discussion about sales managers and leaders. We tend to conflate these concepts, using them interchangeably. In reality there is a wide chasm between leadership and management.
And I have been guilty in conflating these terms–and this is sloppiness. I woke up to this, today, reading an article, proclaiming the death of sales managers. The author went through a huge number of things where AI or other things could do the majority of the job of sales managers.
There were more errors in the list than correct assessments. One of the claims, AI will be a better coach. I’m a deep believer in AI coaching tools, the very best in the world is GRW.AI. But as good as these tools are, they will never displace human based coaching. They will augment and amplify that coaching. Stated differently, many of of working on AI coaching tools aren’t focused on reducing the amount of time managers spend coaching (after all, most research shows they spend a maximum total coaching time of 30-90 minutes a week). But we want to improve their ability to coach and amplify/augment it.
The author suggested valuable things AI will enable more managers spend more time doing important things like storytelling, going to dinner…… (Hmmm…….)
As I read the article, I had an “Aha” moment. We do misunderstand the jobs/responsibilities of the people who have a number of people reporting to them. We talk about them as managers or leaders, thinking they are doing both. But “managership” and leadership are very different. And both of them are required of those people in positions that have people reporting to them.
So let’s dive into these to understand them and their importance.
Leadership and managership are very different. Both are important, but not equally so.
Managership typically has a short term, day to day focus. It looks the effective execution of tasks. In managership, the focus is to reduce uncertainty and increase predictability through the implementation of structured systems and processes.
They are task focused, setting goals, establishing KPIs, and focus on day to day execution. They analyze workflows, eliminate bottlenecks, focusing on maximizing efficiency. They allocate resources and money to maximize output. They seek to minimize disruption as a way to reduce risk. They focus on maintaining stability and order, through operational consistency and performance optimization. They leverage reporting and other tools to help them in doing their work. They often make decisions based on past data, existing frameworks/processes, rather than instinct, vision, experimentation and creativity.
By contrast, leadership has a different focus. They focus on creating a vision, inspiring the organization with that vision, and driving change. Thy align people with this vision/purpose, motivate them, coaching them to reach higher levels of performance. They do this through a balance of influence, empowerment, and transformation. They leverage trust based delegation, encouraging ownership. They shape the organization through establishing a common purpose, shared values, and mission. They inspire movement, change and transformation by aligning people around a cause, not a set of tasks and activities to be executed.
Leadership, in contrast to managership, thrives on ambiguity and embrace change. They constantly challenge the status quo and inspire others to do the same. They are not caught up by the way things are done, but are constantly experimenting, trying to find better ways. They seek to scale their vision, not just the execution.
People responsible for others reporting to them must be experts at both leadership and managership. They must dynamically balance both, integrating both into everything they do. But it is through leadership we understand how to most effectively leverage managership.
Unfortunately, these people have become burdened with the stuff that focuses them on managership. Their hours and days are consumed with the day to day, so much so they don’t have time or forget the leadership side of their jobs.
Too many moving into these roles have no training in leadership of managership. They don’t understand the job and get no coaching in it. It’s easier to fall into the managership side of the job, without even realizing they are neglecting the most important part of the job.
But there is good news. Technology, tools, AI can be deployed with high benefit to many, if not all the managership tasks. They can monitor reports, goals, activities, suggesting or agenticly making suggestions and providing help. This frees these people up to focus on the highest impact areas of their jobs, leadership.
It’s through leadership we inspire and connect with our teams. It’s through leadership that we grow them and the organization to achieve more. It’s through leadership, we connect with each individual helping them constantly grow, develop, and contribute. It’s through leadership, we constantly outperform our competition and outperform our own goals to achieve our potential.
Unfortunately, we miss this. When we talk about leaders and managers, we tend to conflate leadership and managership. We focus on the urgent, which tends to be managership, never finding the time for true leadership.
Afterword: This is the AI generated discussion of this post. Enjoy!
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