227 – Managing vs Leading

[00:00:07] Lily: Hello and welcome to the IDEMS podcast. I’m Lily, a Data Scientist, and I’m here with David Stern, a founding director of IDEMS. Hi, David.

[00:00:16] David: Hi Lily. Looking forward to a discussion. You have a topic in mind.

[00:00:20] Lily: Yes, I think managing versus leading is something that’s been in mind lately.

[00:00:27] David: Yeah. And it is a really interesting topic. It’s one which on the one hand. I feel unqualified on, but on the other hand, I’ve had to spend a long time thinking about this over the last few years, so really happy to dig into a discussion on it.

[00:00:42] Lily: Yes, I imagine, yes. Particularly since starting IDEMS, it’s probably something which has become relevant,

[00:00:50] David: It’s

[00:00:51] Lily: increasingly.

[00:00:52] David: As the team grows, as we think about how important management is as part of what we’re doing, but also the role of leadership and enabling individuals to take to, to become leaders in their own right. Yeah, it is extremely, it’s at the centre of a lot of our thinking.

[00:01:11] Lily: I, I bet. So I guess we’ll start by me asking how do you see the, so to me, managing is about keeping things running and leading is about helping grow or yeah so I guess, yeah. How do you see the difference between managing, what’s your definition?

[00:01:28] David: I mean it’s interesting. I’ve learned bits about leadership in different ways and there’s many different types of leaders. There’s many different types of leadership. The thing which I love is the idea of leadership as servitude.

[00:01:44] Lily: Okay.

[00:01:45] David: A good leader in my mind is serving those who they are leading. And this is where you come back to it, that guiding… that enabling mentoring. That’s to me an, an example done right of leading leadership as a servitude. And there’s many… there’s visionary leadership where people follow you because you have a vision. There’s all sorts of different ways of thinking about leadership. I’ve actually had to read quite a lot of them and there’s a lot to learn, but there’s also in my mind a lot of noise.

If I think very simple. What I simply, what I think leadership is really about is leadership is not about the organisation or the institution, good leadership can be taken by an individual totally informally. This is something where this can be recognised and built into institutions and so on.

But leadership is something which I believe done well, comes from the individual. And, individuals can become leaders, whether it’s in their institution or in a global community or in, in any sort of other way or outside of it, or just in terms of a team. There’s so many different ways that leadership can manifest itself and it often comes out of the individuals themselves.

[00:03:14] Lily: I see. And I suppose part of that comes ’cause you’re saying leadership comes from the individuals themselves and then I suppose. And that you you did a lot of reading to understand about leadership or to I, I dunno, but I guess if I think of like a university degree you’ll have a degree in management a lot or that’s a lot more common than a degree in leadership. It’s…

[00:03:37] David: Yep.

[00:03:38] Lily: …in my understanding.

[00:03:40] David: let me be clear. I think if you think of those, that distinction, the leadership to me is not something… Let me rephrase this. I’m talking about leadership, which is taken rather than leadership, which is given. And I think that’s a really important distinction. You can be given leadership, you can be put into a position of leadership.

Whether you as an individual are ready for it or not. You have that responsibility. You are taking that role of leadership. It’s been given to you. This happens when you are voted in, for example. That’s an example of being given leadership. And I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. This is another form of leadership and it is a very important part.

But the leadership that I’m talking about is the leadership which is taken where you as an individual, whoever it is, you, your actions mean that others are following you in because of the actions you are taking. And that’s taking leadership you know, it’s taking responsibility and others then recognise your leadership in that, whether anyone’s given it to you or not. So I do think, maybe that’s something I didn’t make clear, is that yes, of course leadership can be given to someone.

You can be employed as the CEO of an organisation, and you are given the leadership role within that organisation. But leadership which is taken is something which comes from the individual. That’s a distinction that I would, that I’d make. And so therefore, most managerial roles are instances of when leadership is given.

[00:05:17] Lily: I see. Yes, that makes sense. And so I suppose when leadership is given, that’s more, that feels that’s more of a you could you could be more… sorry, I’m struggling to phrase it. I guess more prepared to an extent in terms of, or… Other people perceive you as someone that’s more prepared.

[00:05:43] David: Maybe not. Leaders who come, who take leadership, people follow them because they perceive them to be worth following. Whereas when leadership is given, people might perceive you as not being ready to take that role. They might tend undermine your leadership and so on. So management is a form I would argue of structured learnings and approaches, which are proven quite often to be effective in roles where leadership is given.

And this is really important. Any large organisation needs to have managers at many different levels who are able to make the organisation work and run. And this distinction, which I like and maybe I suppose I, I didn’t express it well at the beginning where I really, I honed in on this idea of taking leadership, but this distinction between leadership, which is taken versus leadership, which is given where leadership, which is taken is about the individual and leadership, which is given, is about the role that the individual plays.

Yeah, so if you are managing a team, then if someone else had that role, they would be managing the team. Whereas an inspirational leader who is leading something, if they weren’t doing it, it’s not clear that anyone else would or could. It’s them as an individual. Now these two often can marry. There are advantages and disadvantages.

I’m not saying one is better than the other, but you asked for that distinction in my mind between leadership and management, and I would argue management is a form of leadership. And it is a part, it’s not the only form of leadership which is given, but it is within organisations managing a team, managing a section, managing a group.

These are really important roles which are given to individuals. Being the head of a department to university, being the dean of a faculty, these sorts of things. Headmaster at a school, even subject lead at a school, the head of maths. You know these are leadership roles which are given to you, and they are well-defined and they need managerial skills because, you have a head of maths or pretty much any big school, you have a headmaster at any school almost, or head mistress. And you know that role is one which needs leaders who are managers in some form.

[00:08:26] Lily: Okay. Yes. Yeah, no I completely see what you’re saying. So can you. Can it be that there is a, basically, I want to ask, can you be a manager and a leader, but

[00:08:37] David: I would argue that all managers, by definition are leaders,

[00:08:43] Lily: Yes.

[00:08:44] David: Do they follow the sort of leadership, which I talk of as an individual leadership? Are they that sort of leader or not? That’s a totally different question.

[00:08:53] Lily: and that’s the one I want to ask. Can you be a manager, so someone that kind as well as someone that is that kind of, a leader that acts well, that, that kind of takes that initiative, or that…

[00:09:10] David: I understand what you are saying, so let me see if I can, let me see if I can articulate this question, ’cause it’s actually very difficult. It’s a question that I wrestle with all the time.

[00:09:19] Lily: Okay.

[00:09:20] David: Elements of a manager’s role are in some ways in competition with the role that natural leaders take on.

And you see this in politics where you might have people who excel as natural leaders, but once put into a formal political environment, they don’t excel in the same way. And you might have other people in history or in different countries or different places where they don’t come across as natural leaders. They don’t have that natural following. But within the political systems, they excel as essentially managerial leaders of the country or whatever it may be. And so these skills are not necessarily aligned all the time. And so I think part of your question is can these skills be aligned?

And I think the simple answer is I believe yes, I believe there can be people who are natural leaders who also are able to excel in roles of manager, in managerial roles. I myself feel that I am in some ways stronger on one side than I am the other. My, and I do feel that the more I learn about the sort of management skills about leadership in different ways, the more conflicted I am.

It’s not necessarily that the more I learn, the better I do. The more I learn, the more conflicted I become in certain ways because good managers are really important. And I want to take a very simple example, which is very personal to me, but is part of what I struggle with on this.

And this relates to something which I’m sure we’ve discussed a long time ago in a previous episode. I dunno if it was with you or Santiago, but this idea of the inverted pyramid. Where you actually have your managers, instead of being above the people they manage on the pyramid, they are below the people they manage and support the people they manage to take the initiative and so on. This idea of an inverted pyramid model. And in some ways what this is saying and what this is doing is it’s putting this idea of leader servitude to towards management. It’s saying your managers should be serving the individuals who are taking the initiative.

And the more I read into this, the more I understood there are contexts within which this is wonderful and it works really well, and there are contexts within which it is a disaster and it really leads to, it, it doesn’t work well. I don’t wanna get sidetracked by that, but what I do want to say is that the more I’ve thought about that and tried to apply it to IDEMS, the more I recognised that a lot of this is about the individuals in question.

It’s not that we as an organisation should decide we’re going to follow the inverted pyramid model. It is that in a, if you want a manager, manager relationship, there should be flexibility as to whether this follow follows a more hierarchical approach or a more inverted pyramid support approach.

I, as a manager, thrive on the inverted pyramid support approach. I’ve failed pretty drastically with a couple of individuals who needed a manager. Who was more on the hierarchical approach. And so what’s often happened is I then found another member of the team who has, who is, who plays the manager role.

And because they’re able to have that relationship, which works better. And so this idea that the, this is for me, this is something which at IDEMS, I don’t believe should be at the institutional level anymore. There are individuals who need a manager and who want a manager who is a traditional manager, and there are individuals who thrive on being given more independence and having an inverted pyramid style manager supporting them.

And this, part of what I see that as doing is that gives the, the opportunity to take leadership to, to show leadership, to grow leadership. To, this is taking responsibility, actually taking the initiative and to be supported in doing so, and to grow themselves as what I would call a sort of leader, that individual leader as opposed to, to grow in a sort of a more structured leadership.

Now we’re lucky, IDEMS is still a relatively small organisation. It’s not clear how this scales. It really is. These are big questions for us. They’re challenging questions, but I believe what does scale is that awareness of the relationships between individuals being what’s important. That, some individuals who are in positions of leadership like myself have certain managerial styles, which suit me. Whereas other people in leadership positions have other managerial styles who suit them. And similarly, some people who are being led, if you want, who are being managed, have certain styles that suit them and about getting those right.

Relations, that’s the key, and that’s what I believe is really important for us to be conscious of as we grow as an organisation. It isn’t about recognising what the best approach to management or to leadership is. It’s about recognising that when you have a relationship between two people where one is responsible for the other, then this could take multiple forms and the form it should take should depend on the people, the relationship between them and the context within which they’re working.

And if you are aware of all that, then my hope is even as we scale, we can continue to make good decisions about that. Not always getting it right, but trying to make good decisions which help different people grow in ways which suit them

[00:16:21] Lily: Which I guess comes,

[00:16:22] David: Yeah, go

[00:16:23] Lily: No, I was gonna say, which I guess comes back to the principle of Options by Context and Embracing Diversity and that individualism that there is,

[00:16:32] David: if, which is interesting because this is very much, I don’t think of IDEMS as being particularly individualistic as an organisation, but the, and so it is very interesting that these principles are enabled, are there to enable people to be treated as individuals while part of a collaborative hope.

Collaborative by Nature, of course, is really the key. And there is always going to be some form of compromise because we can’t, it isn’t just about meeting the individuals, it’s about the context within that which they are, the relationships and so on. So it’s… it is been a lot of, I guess when I started out as with IDEMS growing in its early days, I was very much sold on ideas like the inverted pyramid model, how we can give, really empower individuals to take ownership and leadership within the organisation. And it is not that’s diminished, but what has happened is this recognition that yes, that is what some individuals need, but it’s not what all individuals need or want.

And that actually imposing that on individuals for whom that is not what they want or need is actually the same sort of hell that imposing a rigid system on somebody who needs that who wants to take that leadership. And this is, it is about recognising that diversity in a way that I hope I’m growing into as well.

And this is as an organisation, I hope we’re growing into this.

[00:18:13] Lily: Yeah. Absolutely. I guess just… And another question then is, you say about this kind of inverted pyramid to empower individuals to take that leadership or to some individuals to take leadership if that suits them. And then, but then how for that individual, do they know if their style is the pyramid or the inverted pyramid?

[00:18:34] David: As a

[00:18:35] Lily: Because then you’re gonna

[00:18:36] David: manager or as a leader.

[00:18:38] Lily: as a lead. So if

[00:18:39] David: Very good question. No, this is a really good question, and the simple answer is, I’m still trying to figure that out. But what I can say is that I, within the team that I work with, where people have flourished under this inverted pyramid model, I have individuals who themselves would more naturally be inverted pyramid sort of people and I have others who would more naturally be more traditional, structured and be good at that. So I don’t think it’s true that you are necessarily going to be the same sort of leader that you require in your own model, if that makes sense. I think there are some very interesting instances where, certain people would thrive as a more managerial, top down leader despite then themselves needing to be led by someone who’s an inverted permit and vice versa.

[00:19:39] Lily: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. No I agree. And I guess the reason why I ask is ’cause at the moment I could see traits of myself attempting both.

[00:19:48] David: Yes.

[00:19:48] Lily: And that being incredibly conflicting. Which then I think is the worst thing to do, right? Is to then be like, okay, giving mixed messages.

[00:20:00] David: part of this is about growing to understand yourself and actually growing that coherence. Coherence can only really come from within on this, there, especially if you are going to be, if you’re given a rigid framework and you said follow that. Okay, yes, you can follow that.

So with a, a standard pyramid managerial approaches you, this is why management can be taught. And there are things you can learn from standard management theories where if you follow these, this actually works very well in that sort of approach. But there’s also increasing amount of works on these alternative managerial approaches on these alternative leadership approaches.

And, and a lot of that is, I believe it can, it’s only conflicting if you don’t have internal coherence.

[00:20:45] Lily: Okay.

[00:20:46] David: Yeah. And getting that internal coherence is, this is why I love the principles as an approach, because that’s some guiding principles can be really good at getting coherence even in complexity.

And so there is, I understand what you are saying of that conflict, which comes, especially as you’re starting out, in positions of responsibility. But at the same time that yeah, that, that conflict is often, that internal conflict is often something which is just part of a growth process.

Not for everyone. Some people don’t get out of it, but many, yeah, people who I would consider good leaders, they, if they’ve gone through it, they’ve actually made their way out so that they actually have some form of internal coherence on it,

[00:21:39] Lily: Interesting.

[00:21:39] David: Which they’re then able to project

[00:21:41] Lily: Yeah.

[00:21:42] David: not perfectly, everything’s imperfect, but yeah.

[00:21:46] Lily: No, very interesting. Thank you very much. Do you have any final thoughts?

[00:21:50] David: My final thought is thank you for bringing this topic up, and it’s a topic which, as I said, I feel both ill qualified and yet deeply immersed in. And so it’s been really interesting to try and express this. I apologise to the listeners if there was, if I wasn’t expressing my internal coherence on this because it is something which I don’t feel I’ve learned to communicate that yet.

I do feel I’m getting, for myself at least, to be more at peace with my own leadership style and, what it what and what the choices around it are. But yeah, that’s maybe another discussion.

[00:22:30] Lily: Excellent. Thank you very much.

[00:22:32] David: No, thank you. This has been great.