You said in your first article.
“In fact, it is possible to manage successfully without an ounce of leadership ability. Management is basically following a script that someone before you or above you created for you to follow. It is a matter of doing things right.”

I totally disagree because it is impossible to be a good manager of resources and functions without being a good leader if one of those resources is people.

Quite simply, managers manage resources and functions such as finance, machines, production, supply chain, and people. People are just another resource. Each of these has certain characteristics which dictate, repeat dictate how they should be managed. Fail to understand their characteristics and you will fail to make effective use of that resource or function.

People have certain characteristics such as the basic needs to be heard and to be respected. People respond to leadership, good or bad, a characteristic not shared by machines or finances. And because of their upbringing, the vast majority of people are followers and thus need superior leadership to “lead” them to very high performance.

My point is that manager or leader is a false issue and only serves to prevent us from understanding what we need to do. If you are dealing with people, you need to understand what leadership actually is, or what it is that people follow, and how to use it to your advantage.

Most managers use the top-down command and control approach to managing people. This makes them their own worst enemy because top-down demeans, disrespects, demotivates and demoralizes employees thus “leading” them to treat their work, their customers, each other and their bosses with the same level of disrespect.

To better understand the right and wrong ways to manage people, please read the article “Leadership, Good or Bad”

If you are interested in learning more about a superior leadership strategy, please read these Leadership Articles

Best regards, Ben
Author “Leading People to be Highly Motivated and Committed”

good observations. Please allow me to add the following.

In a simplification of John B Kotter’s meditations on leadership and management, one may say: Management’s core goal is predictability, leadership creates change.

Did you ever notice that Earned value analysis tells you nothing about a project’s ability to meet a deadline? Or its efficiency? Its profitability?

Earned value analysis measures predictability: Are you doing what you have planned to do – and what has been agreed upon with others?

Leadership is not about adhering to a schedule or an approved forecast. It is about building winning teams that make the customer happy.

Leadership and management often come hand in hand. But sometimes you find yourself in a situation, where you can either be a good leader or a good manager, but not both at the same time.

Kind regards from Bavaria, where people are looking forward to the Oktoberfest,

Oliver F. Lehmann, PMP
http://www.oliverlehmann.com