Thursday, September 6, 2007

Leadership 2.0

I have for some time argued for "Leadership 2.0" as a natural member of the Web 2.0 family tree. I also see "Leadership 2.0" as a needed ingredience for "Web 2.0-success" (whatever is meant by that), as well as part of The Killer Attitude.

However I locked my thinking into "Leadership 2.0 as an individual competence". I have changed my mind. Leadership 2.0 is probably related to the overall leadership/management profile of an organisation.

I was triggered into this direction by a very interesting thread on LinkedIn answers.
The original question in this thread was "A good Manager does things right, while a good Leader does the ...right things. What does it take to do the right things, right?"

This triggered a number of very good answers. One example:
"I read somewhere that a manager maintains the status quo and a leader upsets the status quo." (posted by Doug Miller)
On spot if you ask me... This is one of my favourites from the thread. (To be fair Doug continues "I think that statement is a little blunt")

The overall thread (read it!) shows a clear opinion around the difference between a manager and a leader. I assume that there exist individuals that are clearly both, but you are more likely to find a good manager or a good leader, rather than both in the same person.

The next step in the reasoning is that, depending on what phase an organisation is in, the overall profile of the management shall be blended with different portions of "managers" and "leaders". For startups and organisations that need more change management you need a higher degree of leaders.

Do you agree?

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2 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

Great post! Very interesting and insightful.
I might have to challenge you on your claim that you can either find good managers or good leaders but not both in one. I actually argue that you can't be good at either separately - you need to be good at both. A bad leader can't be a good manager and vice versa. I guess this depends on what you define as success factors, but this is what I believe.
Think about it - can a 'good' manager inspire and help employees grow if he/she is a lousy leader? and vice versa, if a leader has a vision, is he a leader is he is not 'manager' enough to be able to communicate and clarify it and make some sort of plan for way forward to mobilize people?
Hope you quote me in your comments some day :)))

May 25, 2011 at 3:03 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

Great post! Very interesting and insightful.
I might have to challenge you on your claim that you can either find good managers or good leaders but not both in one. I actually argue that you can't be good at either separately - you need to be good at both. A bad leader can't be a good manager and vice versa. I guess this depends on what you define as success factors, but this is what I believe.
Think about it - can a 'good' manager inspire and help employees grow if he/she is a lousy leader? and vice versa, if a leader has a vision, is he a leader is he is not 'manager' enough to be able to communicate and clarify it and make some sort of plan for way forward to mobilize people?
Hope you quote me in your comments some day :)))

May 25, 2011 at 3:04 PM  

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