The Difference between Leadership, Management, and Supervision

/ Ken Blanchard / 10 Comments

A lot of people ask me, “What’s the difference between leadership, management, and supervision?”  Most people think it’s about where you are in the hierarchy—if you’re at the top, you’re a leader; if you’re in the middle, you’re a manager; and if you are closest to the people who are actually dealing with the customers, you’re in supervision.

I’d like to break the mold and forget about those labels. I believe all three are leadership roles. No matter whether you’re at the top, in the middle, or supervising people on the front lines, as a leader you first need to make sure that everybody is clear on goals. The first secret of The One Minute Manager is One Minute Goal Setting. All good performance starts with clear goals, which is the vision and direction part of leadership. The next thing you need to do is to help people accomplish those goals. That brings to mind the second and third secrets of The One Minute Manager. The second secret is One Minute Praising. After people are clear on what they are being asked to do, you need to wander around and see if you can catch them doing something right. Accent the positive and praise them. If someone does something wrong, but is a learner, don’t punish the person. Just say, “Maybe it wasn’t clear about what we were working on,” and redirect. However, if you are dealing with an experienced person who for some reason has a lousy attitude, give the person a One Minute Reprimand, which is the third secret of The One Minute Manager. That’s where you make clear what the person did wrong: “You didn’t get your report in on Friday, and I really needed it. Let me tell you how I feel – I’m really upset about it.”  Be sure, though, that you always end with a reaffirmation: “The reason I’m upset is that you’re one of my best people and I always count on you for that.”

Every level of leadership starts with clear vision and direction and then moves to implementation. Remember that managers, supervisors, and CEOs are all leaders. Don’t let yourself get hung up on labels.

What should leaders be doing to motivate their people in times of downsizing, salary cuts, or an uncertain economy?

/ Ken Blanchard / 2 Comments

With the challenging economy these days, where companies are losing money and people are being downsized, a very important question I get asked is, “How can I, as a leader, motivate my people in these tough times?”  I think there are three things you can do.

The first thing you need to do is to be a bearer of hope. That doesn’t mean you don’t talk about the truth of the present reality, but hope is so important. When our company was facing its toughest year, our CEO, Tom McKee, got out in front of all of the employees and told them the reality of the situation and how much we were down from the year before. But then he said, “I think we can come out of this. We’re going to do it.”  He was a bearer of hope.

The second thing you need to do is to involve your people as your business partners. After Tom spoke, the next day we had a massive brainstorming session that involved all 300 of our employees in small groups, coming up with ideas of how to cut costs and increase revenues. Your people have knowledge—make them your business partners and tap into that resource.

The final thing you need to do is to always remember to be a servant leader. I so believe in that. This is not the time as a leader to be self-centered and worried about yourself or your own job. It’s a time to reach out to your people and encourage them, serve them, and be with them. So be bearers of hope, involve your people as your business partners, and be ready to serve—not to be served—as a leader.

I try to be a leader but it seems no one is listening to me

/ Ken Blanchard / 1 Comment

This is a tough question that especially haunts younger leaders…

If you think you’re a leader and you turn around and nobody’s following, you know what? There’s probably some feedback there that you can learn from. Why aren’t they following?  Because your leadership might be all about you. People want to follow someone who appreciates and cares about them, who thinks they are important. Are you involving your people? That’s what they want. They want to work with somebody who wants to work with them. If nobody’s following you, stop looking in the mirror and thinking that leadership is all about you. No—it’s out there. It’s with them. It’s encouraging them and supporting them and helping them and involving them. People love to follow leaders who share the responsibility of accomplishing goals.  So look out there at your people. That’s where the action is. And if you take care of them, you know what? Next time you turn around, there might be a crowd.

How can we build trust within our organization?

/ Ken Blanchard / 5 Comments

During tough economic times, I’m often asked how to build trust within an organization. People seem to be really down and don’t trust their leaders. I got the best advice about this from my friend Ichak Adizes, who used to be a professor at UCLA—a brilliant guy. He said, “You can’t talk about trust until you talk about respect.” There’s a nonverbal and verbal aspect of each of those. If I respect you, I face you, because I want to hear your opinion. If I don’t respect you, I turn my back on you, because I couldn’t care less what you think. But this it interesting—if I trust you, I’m willing to turn my back on you because I know you mean me no harm. If I don’t trust you, I face you because I need to watch your every move. So these two things work together. You can’t talk about building trust until you show respect. I’ve seen a lot of leaders who will go behind closed doors and start making decisions about other people’s lives. And the people outside the door don’t trust the intentions of the leaders inside; they think they’re in there to serve themselves.

One of the things we do to show respect for people in our company is to share our balance sheet with them so they know how the company is doing. We even brought in someone from Colorado to teach people how to read a balance sheet! We share this because we want everyone to always know where we stand as an organization. We have a gain-sharing program where we share a percentage of our profits with our people. We also have a “give back” program where we take a percentage of our profit and give it to our employees so they can each give money to a charity that is important to them. We want them involved—we show them respect and they trust us in return.  I think it’s so powerful and so necessary to understand how those two things go together. If you don’t treat people with respect, they won’t trust you. Trust and respect go together.

My boss acts like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

/ Ken Blanchard / 1 Comment

Another big question that I get all the time…

What do you do if you have an unpredictable boss—where you never know who’s going to show up?  One day he’s upbeat and happy and thinks you’re great, and the next day you feel like you’re dealing with an ogre. I suggest two things: The first is to get your resume out there, because you might want to go find another place or another boss. The other thing, which is so important, is to never buy into the idea that your self-worth is a function of your performance plus the opinion of others. If you get hooked into that outlook on life, then your self-worth is up for grabs every day. Why? Because nobody’s performance is great every day. Have you ever noticed how fickle people are? They don’t operate the same way every day, either. So one of the things you need to deal with, if you are dealing with someone with an erratic personality, is that God did not make junk. You are absolutely beautiful. Don’t have your whole day depend on how someone else treats you. Remember that you’re a good person who is loved. Maybe that boss doesn’t quite get it yet. But he or she will.