As a manager, what’s the best thing you can do for your organization? Is your highest goal making money? Is it the financial largess of your organization, or the praise of your customers? Have you ever wondered how noble it is to help a very few people make a lot of money? What is the greatest good of a manager in a for-profit organization?
I’ve recently read a couple of different articles about how managers must “balance the drive for performance against the needs of the employees.” You must admit that the tension between the two seems real. We can put profits and performance before people or we can put people before profits and performance. [click to continue…]
I’ve read a few articles criticizing Warren Bennis and others for the way they tend to polarize leaders vs. managers or leaders vs. managers and supervisors. Wally Bock always has an interesting perspective and he posted a much commented Three Star Leadership blog post here. Wally has rich experience in leadership development, developing new leaders, and building a leadership culture and he provides some interesting critical balance in his post and throughout his blog.
Dr. Bennis seems to suggest in his quotes and his books that you either are a leader or a manager. It almost seems like he believes you can only be one or the other and if you’re a manager, you should stop and become a leader. [click to continue…]
