Much ado about Leadership, er, Management, no, Leadership - what's the difference?

We've seen three articles recently that have taken up the "leadership" vs. "management" controversy and, in particular, the role that training plays in this "battle."

According to Paul Glover, in The Changing Face of Training,

"Statistics show that 50% of all front line managers who are promoted to the next level fail at that new job, and some even return to their previous lower-level positions. They fail because they don't have the training to be a manager instead of a worker. Sure, they may receive training on machinery or processes, but soft skills - the ability to communicate, supervise, and work in a team - get overlooked."

And Sebastian Bailey, President of Mind Gym Inc., says,

"Businesses tend to over-invest in leadership and concentrate on developing leaders but not managers."(HR Magazine, August 2012)

Finally, Michael Leimbach and Barb Taruscio of Wilson Learning, state,

"What's the difference between consistently successful companies and those that fail? To sustain success through good times and bad takes more than good products and marketing and finances - these are necessary but not sufficient. To pull these elements together and outperform the competition year after year requires great leadership. This is the one asset that makes all the difference: leaders with imagination, know-how, and highly effective management skills to encourage, inspire, and elicit high performance from a well-trained workforce." (Training Magazine, July / August 2012)

These authors go on to describe successful companies as driven by leaders "who have both Form (the skill and knowledge to produce results) and Essence (character to inspire and lead with values and clarity of purpose).

Perhaps it's time to assess your management (or leadership) development curriculum and see which way you lean? It seems it is not simply a matter of semantics. Each of the quoted authors makes a distinct point that management and leadership require different skills.  Does one encompass the other? Can one learn one without the other? Is it possible to be a successful company with one set of skills but lacking in the other? All good questions to ask of your organization's current leadership and to contemplate when dissecting your current management / leadership curriculum.

This just in!

Recent findings released by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development in the United Kingdom reveal that three-quarters of employers report a lack of leadership and management skills in their organizations.  Bill Willmott, head of public policy at CIPD states, as a potential cause, "Too many employees are promoted into people management roles because they have good technical skills, then receive inadequate training and have little idea of how their behavior affects others."