I wonder if you couldn’t break apart the functions of leaders, managers and technicians.
A technician should be concerned with mastering two things: themselves as a person and their craft. To master yourself as a person, you have to know yourself. What are your motivators and demotivators? How do you discipline yourself to be productive? Are you trustworthy? Are you reliable? What beliefs or actions do you have that are stopping you from being that type of person? While you are doing that, focus on your craft. Everyone has natural interests and abilities. What do you enjoy to do? Get good at it. You don’t have to be the best in the world, but you have to be good at it, which means you are better at it than most people. If you want to become the best in the world at it, it means you are going to dedicate yourself to being a Technical Expert. You’ll stay a technician, but this is a good life and one worthy of pursuit. A master of their craft, a master technician, is very valuable.
Some people may decide they want to move beyond individual contributions into team contributions. In such cases, the next step should be to become a manager of process. Not necessarily a manager of people; though managing processes is absolutely related to working with people. When I say manage processes, what I mean is things like: Is the process flowing? Are there problems in the process that need to be addressed, including identifying weak people resources? Are there ways to improve the process? Is the output from the process sufficient quality? You have to become a systems thinker.
A leader’s role is to make the big decisions (set the strategy and the objectives to accomplish the mission) and to inspire the managers and technicians to achieve the mission. As the team is executing on the mission, there are decisions that have to be made along the way. External circumstances change, people leave, new information becomes available, etc. One of the key functions of a leader is to review the input information, determine if there is sufficient quality and quantity of inputs, and then use the inputs to predict outcomes. As the situation continues, is the outcome likely to be achieved?
An easy example of this is a cost-benefit analysis for a manufacturing line. We collected information concerning the price of the equipment, operational cost, and ongoing maintenance costs. We compared that to the increase in operational efficiency or sales capability that we think we can achieve. Based on that analysis, we predict there will be a ROI on the investment within 14 months. As we execute on the plan, we analyze the actual data against the predictions that we made to see if our prediction is going to come true, or if there is anything new that we need to do to get an outcome we desire. If we don’t achieve the ROI within a close approximation after the predicted outcome, then the decision was a mistake. We should see where we made a mistake and not repeat it.
A more complicated example of this is matching individual people with the tasks that manager’s need to complete their processes. For example, if you need a person who has the soft skill of original creativity with the hard skills of adobe creative suite software mastery, but you have no one on the team, then you have to hire a person. Now you’re trying to match up at least 3 sets of soft skills: original creativity, design software, and their ability to communicate, produce, and fit into your organization. You go through an interview process, and you try to gain as much information about the person as you can. Have you clearly identified your outcome? Do you know what you’re trying to hire them for? If so, you compare the inputs you learned from interviewing against the predicted outcome of having a person on your team who will be a good fit for the kind of tasks that you need completed. If any of those 3 sets of skill areas are not a good match, then you have a problem. If the problem is the soft skill of original creativity or their interpersonal and discipline skills, it may be a problem that you can’t correct (but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t try). If it’s a hard skill like software skills, you may or may not be able to correct it based on this person’s discipline and ability to learn. Maybe you didn’t test for those specific traits of discipline and learning when you hired them though, so maybe you don’t know if they possess the requisite attributes to be able to even acquire the hard skills. If the person turns out to not be a good fit, then the leader made a bad decision, they saddled the manager with the wrong person in the process, and now they’re faced with a new decision. Do you as the leader confront your mistakes? Confronting your mistakes is time consuming, costly, and painful. In this situation, it probably means that you are going to have to fire that person and start over. If you make too many mistakes, you will run out of time and money. But if you chose to “live with” your mistakes, there are consequences to that as well. If you fail to hold the person who isn’t performing accountable, then you are showing the people who follow you that you are okay with mediocrity or that you are ignoring problems. Even if you live with the mistake, you have to visibly expect excellence. Otherwise, people will stop believing that you require excellence.
A novice leader may not have developed the systems thinking that is required of managers, which will hamper their ability to see the big picture. A novice leader may not yet have acquired the vision-casting ability necessary to be able to clearly visualize what outcome is desired, so that you can predict whether or not a course of action will achieve the outcome. A novice leader may not yet be able to accurately judge the inputs they are receiving – is this information that I am seeing the whole picture? Is the data trustworthy? Do I have enough of the right kind of data? There is a quote by Colin Powell, “Use the formula P=40 to 70, in which P stands for the probability of success and the numbers indicate the percentage of information acquired… Once the information is in the 40 to 70 range, go with your gut.” So, a novice leader has to learn how to get information within the “P=40 to 70” range. Once they have that information, can you apply an analysis to determine the likelihood of a predicted outcome? The more experienced you are at reviewing your inputs, determining if you have the right quality and quantity of inputs, and applying the analysis to predict the likelihood of achieving an outcome, then the better you will become at making decisions. An experienced leader can make very quick, accurate decisions by developing their skill of decision-making.
A leader is the pinnacle of a one kind of personal development triangle: Leader, manager, technician. (Another kind of personal development triangle is the Master Technician or the Expert Manager). At the technician level, you focus on mastering interpersonal soft skills and hard, technical skills. Then, if you rise to the level of manager, it’s no longer about completing tasks, but it’s about coordinating people to complete processes. You start to see how tasks are linked together, how the motivation and skills of individual people affect the team’s performance. You have an opportunity to learn how to communicate, resolve conflict, manage motivation, build trust, and camaraderie with the team. And you have to do all of this from a position of functional authority (manager of process) but not positional authority (leader of people). These types of skills are the basis for inspiring people; they are the soft skills of leadership. If you can’t accomplish these types of things in the more limited role of a manager, then you should never be promoted to be a leader. The manager’s guardrails are that they are not wholesale changing processes, and they’re not hiring, firing, or reprimanding people. They have to work with the leader for those things.
The leader’s job then is to make decisions and inspire people. In addition to everything else I have laid out, there are requirements for the leader to understand the big picture, to care about the well being of the people that he/she leads, and to constantly communicate why the work we are doing as a team is important. The leader has to maintain the energy of the boat and of the crew. They must make sure that all parts of the boat are functioning together. Whereas a manager may only be concerned with the workings of the engine, a leader is concerned with how the engine interacts with the other departments and that the engine is supporting the needs of the boat as a whole. A leader of leaders is concerned with the entire boat. That every component is working as intended: the engine, the hull, the mess, the guns, everything. But this area of concern is the same as the basic decision making examples that I gave above. The leader has to receive inputs from the boat – status reports – and they have to determine: are these status reports trustworthy? Am I receiving the right kind of information? Is it timely? If so, then based on that information, is the predicted outcome likely to achieve our mission? If not, then what do I have to change. Sometimes I have to change the processes, sometimes I have to change the people who are doing the processes, sometimes I have to add new equipment, and sometimes I have to change the mission, its strategy, or the objectives to reach that strategy.