By Martin Crump.
Martin is a Director and co-founder of Evolution. He is a certified NLP Master Trainer with a wealth of experience of working with organisations of all sizes and types across the UK.
For a business to be successful it has to sell it’s products or services for more than it costs to supply these goods or services – it’s that simple.
Simple, but not easy. The world is changing, and that pace of change is getting faster and faster. Changes in technology, communication processes, employees expectations, globalisation and the job market itself, mean that the way we used to manage our businesses needs to change. We need to be much more flexible and innovative just to keep pace with our competitors. Leading, rather than managing is the way to increase flexibility and get the best out of all our resources – including the workforce.
So what is the difference between Managing and Leading?
In his 1989 book “On Becoming a Leader,” Warren Bennis said that the manager’s job is to plan, organize and coordinate. The leader’s job is to inspire and motivate.
Managers are:
Task Focused
- · Planning
- · Setting measures and targets
- · Reviewing Progress
- · Understanding strengths and weaknesses
- · Understanding problems and needs
- · Communicating to get the task done
Leaders are:
People Focused
- · Providing vision
- · Inspiring others
- · Providing Direction
- · Aligning to common goals
- · Involving people
- · Communicating to understand individual perspectives and issues
“Managers do things right – Leaders do the right things”
A lot of the skills are the same – Leaders still need to be able to plan, coordinate, follow processes and monitor performance.
Some of the key Leadership skills are: Communication, motivation and delegation, managing people’s performance and creativity.
All these skills can be learned, or improved upon through a number of development methods.
At Evolution, we have developing leaders for over 15 years and we have continually been developing and changing our programmes to meet the changing needs of our customers.
The latest thing we are focusing our efforts on is to integrate Leader’s development with Customers’ involvement with Corporate Social Responsibility.
The World Business Council for Sustainable Development in its publication “Making Good Business Sense” by Lord Holme and Richard Watts, used the following definition. “Corporate Social Responsibility is the continuing commitment by business to behave ethically and contribute to economic development while improving the quality of life of the workforce and their families as well as of the local community and society at large”
Business In The Community is a business-led charity with a growing membership of 850 companies, from large multinational household names to small local businesses and public sector organisations.
They advise, support and challenge our members to create a sustainable future for people and the planet and to improve business performance.
They believe that a responsible business is built by acting sustainably across all of its operations; in the workplace, in their marketplace, in their communities and in the environment.
We believe that an organisation has a responsibility to It’s Customers, It’s employees, It’s Shareholders, the Community it is part of and the world as a whole. Obviously, an unsuccessful business cannot help the community or the environment, so the focus has to be on developing a financially sustainable business first.
Our latest Leadership Development Programme is called Outside In and focuses on Leadership, Adventure and Community.
According to Nik Green Adventure Training and Leadership
The outcomes of engaging in an adventure education programme have been researched (Hopkins & Putnam 1993) and include the following: improvement in self esteem, raised confidence levels, increased levels of personal motivation, willingness to embrace change and situations with uncertain outcomes. These are ideal attributes for Leading in todays rapidly changing business environment.
One of the other advantages of adventure training lies in the flexibility of the programme delivery to introduce more ‘real’ situations to apply delegates’ learning to, which is much more difficult to do in a classroom environment.
So, our new programme combines our experience and tried and tested Leadership development programmes with adventure training and a final exercise involving raising money for ShelterBox and taking part in the Dartmoor Challenge to apply all of the learning in a challenging environment. We are working with Adventure training specialist Spirit of Adventure to ensure that we develop and deliver the best possible programme.
The course is accredited by the NCFE at either a level 3 or level 4 depending on the customer’s needs.