Small Business Growth: The Difference Between Leadership and Management

When we started digging in under the covers, we soon realized that the things we thought were getting done were not getting done. And that's why we were missing our goals. That's ultimately why we're having to lay people off. And that's deterred us from the success that we thought we were on. I've had that same conversation with 3 entrepreneurs in the last month alone in that they were lacking one thing that has almost become a bad word in today's society. They were lacking management. They had leadership. They were creating a great culture. People were happy to work there. Everybody loved it. But they lacked management. And it's funny because in today's society, being a manager has almost become a bad word again. And so today's episode, we're going to break into what are some of the differences between management and leadership. Leadership. How do you handle management and leadership if you're a smaller organization and don't have a well-built-out leadership team? And what are some practical ways you can move forward to better manage and lead your team? My name is Matt Vadie. Welcome to Culture and Compliance, the podcast where we explore the intersection of company culture and regulatory compliance. For the past 10 years, I've been helping small business owners to create better workplaces while staying compliant with HR regulations. In every episode, I'm going to share war stories, lessons learned, and practical tips to help you build a thriving, compliant workplace. Let's go. All right, so let's look at— this is the type of meme I've been seeing on LinkedIn and everywhere else for the past few years. I'm just going to read it to you here on the video where it will— you can see Maybe an image of it will pop up, but there's this difference between manager and leader. A manager drives employees, depends on authority, inspires fear, says I, places blame, knows how it is done, uses people, takes credit, commands, says go. Whereas a leader is this altruistic person who coaches people, works on goodwill, generates enthusiasm, says we, fixes breakdowns, shows people how it's done, develops people, gives credit, asks, says let's go. Man, I'm getting really tired of this narrative that the leaders are somehow better than managers and that management does not have a place in organizations. And look, let me just say this. I'm a pretty terrible manager. It is one of my downfalls. I've fallen into this trap of like, be a leader, give everybody as much autonomy as humanly possible. You know, things will get done if you empower people and inspire them. Well, that's all well and good. But man, somebody's got to inspect what you expect, which is the manager's job. You've got to have metrics, you've got to have expectations, you've got to have clear ways of getting things done. You can't just hope people figure it out and hope it gets done. Hope is not a strategy, people. And so that's why we're going to talk about what the difference between some good leadership and good management looks like. And again, what do you do? You know, for years, I was the sole leadership team member of our organization. So how do I manage these things as a sole leader? Well, I didn't do a wonderful job. So hopefully, I can help you learn from some of my mistakes. But I think that's the biggest thing right out of the gate is just, you know, again, assuming things are getting done because you've shown somebody how to do it, or you've told them how it, you know, it gets done and inspired them and done all the leadership bullets that we just talked about, only to come back and look later on and realize like, oh crap, this isn't getting done, or it's getting done wrong, or it's inconsistent, or somebody turned over. The new hire, we showed them how to do it in their first month and then they just stopped after 6 months for some reason. I can't tell you the number of times I've looked back and had that happen where Hey, this was working fine until it wasn't. Right? So somebody was just, for whatever reason, and I can never seem to figure out the, you know, kind of the motivation behind it. But just, hey, one week they stopped doing it. And then they maybe noticed a couple weeks later, well, nobody noticed I stopped doing it. So was it that important? Well, probably not, if nobody notices. And that's ultimately why we have to have some accountability to the things that we expect to be done in our organization. And you can still be be a great leader and hold people accountable, uh, in a way that is sensitive to their, their sort of adulthood, I guess, for lack of a better term, right? We want to treat everybody like adults on our team. But at the same time, high performers expect that you are going to make sure that they are getting work done. And so I like to use the example of high-level athletes. Think about Michael Phelps all the time. Michael Phelps had the same coach from the time I think he was 15 moving on. And there's never been an Olympic athlete that didn't have a coach. They all have a coach. They all have somebody helping show them the way. And do they simply inspire them or do they give them an actual plan, workout routine, and what to do to achieve the success that they want? Well, they do both, right? So are you telling me that they're a, a bad leader because they gave them the exact plan on how to do it? That's nonsense, man. I do like this idea. Hey, look, as leaders, we need to focus on people. We need to develop a vision. We need to create ideas. We need to shape the culture. All those things are true, but we also need to coordinate people. We also need to maintain a system. We also need to execute the vision. Now, you can— this, this book, Traction, and EOS has become incredibly popular over the last few years. Many small businesses are using this. You're starting to see the visionary and integrator language everywhere, which is wonderful and fine and all that. But it's also given people who are visionaries or, you know, sort of identify as a visionary, the ability to say, well, I'm not going to do any of the stuff that, that an integrator does. Well, okay, that's great if you have a large organization and two people purely defined inside of those roles that both have a deep level of comfort with their association with those roles, and they are doing doing their job and doing it well. But not all small businesses have that luxury of like, hey, this person's job is integrator, this person's job is visionary, and they're able to do those things as their core role. Most of us have to toe the line and do some of both. We have to lead and manage. And so here are some practical ways I think about it as I try to manage the things that are important to my team while also knowing I'm a member of a 3-person leadership team on a small business. And so we each have areas of the that we're accountable for making sure that work gets done. And so, for example, you know, we recently had a, a process that wasn't getting executed properly that negatively impacted a client. And so while the person who wasn't doing it, it's certainly fair to say, hey, what happened here? When did this stop? How do we fix it? You know, what can we do to make sure that you're set up for success to make sure this task executes regularly on time and on track. But also, we have to go to the leader and say, hey, this is your job to make sure this gets done. You are accountable for this task getting done. You may not be the one doing it, but it's still your accountability, and it's inside of your purview of things that you need to get done. And so that's their role to figure out how to manage that situation. And, you know, during one of the conversations I referenced, where I've had multiple of these conversations over the last few weeks, This person was telling me, "Hey, we realize we're not hitting our goals. They're slipping. We keep slipping. We keep missing, but we've got an amazing culture. Everybody's so happy here." Well, everybody's so happy here because everybody's acting like leaders and everybody's kind of operating above the day-to-day. Well, when everybody's operating above the day-to-day, who's getting the day-to-day done and who's holding them accountable? And nobody wants to hold others accountable and nobody wants to feel held accountable if you don't set that expectation on the front end, which I think is tip number 1, is make sure that you're setting the expectation on the front end of, hey, we're going to coach you, we're going to manage you, we're going to lead you, we're going to do all those things because they're important to the success of you as an individual and the success of the business. Going back to that coaching analogy, I can't just say, hey, go do these 10 sprints and come back tomorrow. I want to know that you did them. I want to make sure that you put in the work and that you did it well, because there's a very big difference between, you know, doing 10 sprints at a 60% exertion versus an 80% exertion and the distance of the sprint. And so having some clearly defined management expectations is what makes a good leader. And that's what also helps employees to become top performers. So sometimes we have to set that bar. Now, this doesn't— this is where it gets a little squishy, right? Some people are hearing that and they're going, man, That sounds like micromanagement. The ultimate term. I don't want to be micromanaged. Well, you know, one thing that I've noticed in today's society is that anytime anybody's getting managed, they feel like they're getting micromanaged. And that's just not true, man. You've got to like have a little bit thicker skin. If somebody is checking in with you on whether or not something got done the way that they asked for it to be done, that is not micromanagement. That is management. That is making sure that the task got done. And you, when you put yourself in the same shoes, It's very easy to say, well, I'm going to empower my people and they'll, they'll get the work done because they're all grownups and they're all adults. Well, yeah, lovely in theory. But again, this is what we start to get. We start to get, you know, scope creep of like, I can start to let things slide when people aren't watching them. And now I'm starting to work above the day to day, but maybe my job is to get the day to day done. And that's my responsibility at the company. And so We all have different responsibilities. We all have different things we're accountable for, but we should never, ever, ever be upset when somebody's holding us accountable to those things unless they're being mean about it, unless they're being overbearing and it's a, you know, every couple hours thing. We have, we have things that need to happen for our company to succeed on a daily, hourly, weekly, monthly basis. And it's all of our responsibility to help move that forward. That's what we get paid to do, right? Regardless of what your role is. You know, again, there are different approaches. I'm not saying there's not terrible managers out there, and I'm not saying there aren't people that are micromanaging people, because there are. And I've been a terrible manager and I've been a good manager. I don't know that I'm a particularly strong manager because I'm not an attention to details guy, but I've got to get past that because attention to detail is what makes a business run. It's what makes a business successful. And, you know, I just watched this really great video yesterday with a guy who's actually keynoting at our upcoming conference, Allen Stein Jr. And he tells this story about when he's— he was training Kobe Bryant, or no, I'm sorry, he wasn't training him, but he met him at an event and he asked him if he could come and watch his training routine the next morning. And Kobe said, sure, I'll be in the gym at 4. And, you know, Allen checked the schedule and he's like, man, that's weird. The practices start at 3. Why would he get there till 4? And Kobe was like, no, 4 AM. And so instead of 4 PM, 3 PM when everybody else is getting there, Kobe's going to get his workout in first thing in the morning. So really good story Alan tells about how he tries to beat him there, but you know, he gets there at 3:45 or whatever it is and Kobe's already in there going through an intense warmup. He's already put in a bunch of reps and he's getting ready. And then he said the first hour or whatever the time period was of his workout, Kobe was doing very basic stuff. He was doing like layups, short jump shots, you know, dribble drills, stuff that any basketball player could do at any level. And he was shocked to see this. And then he asked him afterwards, he said, you know, why were you focusing on such basic things? You're one of the best basketball players in the world. He said, the difference between me and everybody else is that I am completely comfortable in discipline and doing the basics over and over and over and over, because they're the foundation, they're the fundamentals, and they're the things that everybody else wants to skip that I am comfortable and have become comfortable with making sure they get done. And that is a big portion of management is making sure the boring stuff gets done day in and day out. Now, does it make you a bad leader if you're not managing to that level? Not necessarily, but you have to make sure those things are getting done. And does it make you, uh, you know, a bad leader if you manage people to make sure those things get done? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. And, you know, if somebody feels— again, the word feels— like they're being micromanaged because you're managing the process, it's probably just because you haven't set up proper expectations. And that's the biggest thing on the front end of this is like from the time you're hired to the time you're, you know, from time you're interviewing to the time you're hired to a year in, just communicating those expectations of, hey, what does management and leadership look like here at our organization versus maybe some other places you worked? And what are we going to do to hold you accountable to outcomes to help you succeed, right? Because if you're not mastering the basics, if you don't have the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy of needs fulfilled, then how can you continue to move up the ladder, right? How can you— we used to call it staring into the sun. If a teammate was always focused on the next role, always focused on getting promoted, they often would not execute their current role very well. And then they would be upset when they got passed over for a promotion. Well, if you can't execute your current role, why on earth would we promote you into another role? And so until you prove that I've got the donuts made every single day the same way exactly. Now look, as a as a manager, once somebody shows you they're competent, once they show you that this thing's getting done, they have no issue with the reporting, then you move on, right? And you check in less frequently. You find a different way to check in. Maybe you ask them to proactively report results. But, you know, one of the most interesting examples of this is we had an individual we hired here in the last few years, and during the interview process, they just kept talking about how, you know, they work really well autonomously. And of course, they were 100% remote, and they, you know, and that's fine. We have 100% remote people. Not going to get into the remote versus hybrid versus in-office debate in this episode. We'll do another one. But, you know, continue to, hey, I excel with autonomy. Whenever I would do a meeting with this person, they would talk about how they felt like their manager was micromanaging them. And you know what? We look back, I think they were with us less than a year. They not only didn't do what we expected from the processes we already had in place, they begged for autonomy to create new processes to improve it, didn't do that either. And so they were missing on nearly every level, but complained the entire time that they were being micromanaged. And so I know not everybody fits in that category, but unfortunately that's what you're up against if you're the type of teammate that is like, hey, I don't want to be micromanaged. Well, we've all been burned by the person who says that over and over again, and then isn't getting the work done. And in this case, you know, it's debatable if this person was working hardly at all, as we went back and looked through it. And so you have to, you know, and again, like, hold yourself accountable to— if I'm going to beg for the autonomy, and I'm going to beg for the, you know, being left alone and being 100% remote, you better be able to show your work. Right? We're all expected to show the results, the outcomes. Again, I know a lot of people get hung up on that. Well, I don't want to show the page of work that I did, I just want to show you the outcome. That's fine, but the outcomes have to be there. And that's, that's the thing, is that oftentimes the same people who are begging for autonomy and saying they're a grown-up and saying that they can work without any management, quote unquote, or micromanagement, quote unquote, are the same people that are ruining it for everybody else because they're a not executing, and B, they're maybe not even working at times. And so leadership versus management, I like to think about it like this, and this individual can be one and the same, is, you know, somebody, a leader, somebody who's focused on people, develops a vision, creating ideas, aligning people, shaping the culture, looking into the future, driving change, asking the what and the why behind the things we're doing. Being strategic, having influence, and really creating a quality work environment, that's leadership. We want to create the type of culture that people want to be a part of. We don't want to sweat and micromanage people. Again, you can manage outcomes, you can manage results without micromanaging people, whether that's on a weekly reporting cadence, whether that's on a monthly reporting cadence. What are the things that have to get done? And if they don't, there will be penalties in some way, shape, or form for the people involved. Let's make sure we're managing to those, those outcomes and results. By being managers that are focusing on tasks, that are executing that vision that has been developed, that are coordinating the people, shaping the day-to-day, focusing on the present, implementing change, asking how and when, making plans, and putting people in position to succeed. Now, those two things to me, management and leadership, can take place in the same individual. But again, it all comes down to communication. How do you communicate to your team what the expectations are? How do you cast a vision in a way that's compelling? And then also say, hey, look, here's what it takes to execute that vision. And we're going to master those basics. We're going to show up in the gym. We're going to do the, uh, the layups. We're going to do the basic drills. We're going to establish that foundation so that our team is set up to succeed. Those are my thoughts on this. And, you know, these are the things where, again, a lot of small businesses are having to take a step back now and say, man, I've been I've been trying to lead and not manage. And I've been so focused on creating an awesome culture that I forgot that we actually have work to do for us all to have jobs going forward. And that's the end result is that of those two organizations I talked about, one of them had to lay off about half their staff. And that's because when they, again, they start peeling back the covers and they realize that the managers weren't managing. They were so focused on, and this is one of those cool places to work, man. Music's pumping when you walk in, big open floor plan, everybody's loving it, everybody's having a good time, everybody's having a blast. It's, you know, always fun, always upbeat, but the work's got to get done at the end of the day, right? Like I said in my book, ping pong is not a strategy. Thanks y'all for tuning in today. I appreciate it. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure you like and subscribe. Thank you for joining Culture and Compliance. My name is Matt Patey.