At the end of the day, you’re generally responsible for what happens in your organization. You are responsible for what gets done, and what does not get done. Sometimes however, you give your best efforts and your organization just doesn’t seem to progress. You feel like a cross country runner, running on an asphalt road on a hot summer day. The road is sticky, you expend a lot of energy, but there isn’t much forward momentum and moral goes down. You wonder what’s wrong. You examine your product or service and everything seems to be going fine. You take a look at your people and really you see no need for change. Yet something is wrong. What is it?

The answer is you may not be providing the two elements only you can provide to ensure forward momentum. What are those elements?

Number one is leadership.

Number two is management.

To be successful you must be both a leader and a manager. It is only as you serve your people in both capacities at your organization will move toward your objectives. Since the terms leader and manager are used in many ways, let let us look at the definitions to help us focus our thinking.

Manager: A person who concentrates more on work than on people and who operates within established patterns and practices. He gets the job done by directing and guiding the work of others within the limits of those practices.

Leader: A leader, concentrates more on people, than on work. He moves people out of the limits of the traditional. He enables people to move into new areas of activity and achievement. He does this, not by direct control, but through the relationship he has with his people.

One person said, leadership is essentially a “relationship between individuals that is, between the leader, and every member of the group he leads.” Leadership inspires people. It makes them want to work.

Management on the other hand, provides the means for stability, know-how, and sound the planning in an organization. It enables people to reach the objectives inspired by leadership.

Balance is Necessary

Both leadership and management are essential in the work of any dynamic organization. If the manager is the head of the organization, the leader is the heart. Nowhere is the balance between leader manager more important than in the key man of the organization. The people of your organization require a sense of mission. They must have inspiration to become involved in the work of the organization and leadership supplies this inspiration. With out leadership, morale will fall.

People also want and need direction and guidance on how to fulfill that mission. Without providing clear direction, morale also falls. Other people in your organization, no matter how capable they are, simply cannot satisfy these two needs.

History is full of the men who have experimented with delegating one or the other of these two responsibilities to a subordinate. It usually hasn’t worked. Why? Because that requires an organization to have two heads. Jesus the master teacher said, no man can serve two masters.

Each organization and each department within an organization must have one person who’s ultimately responsible for motivating it’s people and coordinating their efforts. He can delegate many duties but he cannot delegate the top leadership and management responsibilities without creating problems with in the organization. That my friends, is why a leader manager is key.

Join me next Monday for part two discussing the necessity of a leader manager in any successful organization.