Jason Hiner: Anyone who reads business books can easily track the rise and fall of leadership and management as opposed disciplines. Sometimes the demand is for more vision and inspiration; other times, it's for more measurement and control. But the reality is, the two disciplines cannot work apart.

 

I'm Jason Hiner, and today on Sanity Savers for IT Executives, I'll look at five ways that leadership and management roles complement and depend on each other.

 

Number 1: Leaders inspire, managers measure

 

When leaders finish speaking, the listeners want to go out and change the world. They get fired up and moving, willingly facing problems they would have ignored before. This energy gradually fades until the leader reestablishes it.

 

When managers finish speaking, everyone knows what is expected of them, how it will be measured, and what results to expect. In other words, they know exactly what they have to do. This knowledge remains valid until the goal changes.

 

Number 2: Leaders guide, managers navigate

 

Leaders give their teams a general idea of where they want to take the team. The team members then do their best to get from the current state to the future state, using the skills they posses to cover the gap.

 

When managers describe what they want done, they includes clear instructions regarding the who, what, when, where, why, and how of the gap plan. Then -- ideally at least -- the team enacts the plan in an organized fashion.

 

Number 3: Leaders hope, managers analyze

 

Leaders sometimes seem unattached to reality. Their focus on a vision of what could be gives them great hope and helps them weather trials. It also sometimes leads them to ignore problems that honestly need to be addressed before the future can come to be.

 

Managers, on the other hand, clearly see the present with all its warts and flaws. This clarity enables them to resolve current issues. It also can create a loop in which they can't change things because they know only "the way things have always been done."

 

Number 4: Leaders envision, managers maintain

 

Leaders speak about the future as if it already exists. They see it, taste it, and can sometimes even feel it just out of reach. This vision allows them to show the team what could be, lifting them out of habitual ruts.

 

Managers speak about what they currently see and measure. They explain clearly how things operate and identify metrics to further refine that operation. These metrics may help change. But more often, they reinforce existing habitual behaviors.

 

Number 5: Leaders rally, managers retrench

 

When things go wrong, leaders gather their team together, reestablish the vision, inspire the group, and then go out to protect them while they deal with the situation. Leaders stand up, do what's right, and accept the consequences of their team's actions as their own. The team continues to work and react in the background.

 

When things go wrong, managers gather their team together, identify the exact problem, create a plan to address it, assign tasks, and dispatch the team with strict instructions. Assuming the initial analysis identified the problem and no other problems arise, the team will quickly resolve the issue and then return to normal operation.

 

Without leadership, management does little more than defend the status quo. However, without management, all the leadership in the world can't create a sustainable change. Clearly, leaders and managers have highly distinct roles -- but both are essential to the success of the business.

 

For more, see Shannon Kalvar's article, "Achieving executive balance: Nine ways leaders and managers work together."

 

I'm Jason Hiner, and this has been an episode of Sanity Savers for IT Executives. For more, go to sanity.techrepublic.com. And if you have feedback or your own sanity savings tips, e-mail them to us at sanity@techrepublic.com. And for those of you on Twitter, you can find me at twitter.com/jasonhiner. Thanks for watching. See you next time.