Leadership vs. Management

Hey Their friends and welcome back to becoming a boss where we take some time each week to share a stories and strategies with you so that you can feel inspired and equipped to grow into the best version of your self. Okay. So today we're going to do a fun comparison management versus leadership. Are you a manager? Are you a leader? Hm. Something to think about. We're going to do this with a little story about marina. Marina has moved. She moves across the country into a new job, new place, new area. Her industry is finance. She's already had a lot of success in the finance industry, in her previous roles. She also has a business. Oh of her own, where she helps other companies handle their finances. So a lot of success, very competent in her. Boom right now, that being said, she starts her new job and quickly realizes there isn't much work to do. Okay. And so like any good employee, she arranged the meeting with her boss, her boss, his name is Karen. What. That's her name? Okay. So she arranges the meeting with her boss, Karen, and she wants to know if there's something different she could do, because obviously there's no, there's no work well, can we there's no work. Okay. So Karen, thank you for asking, but no, not at this time. There's nothing that you can do. So she sends marina away without any further direction. So, okay. Manager move. It's understandable that maybe there isn't any work to do. However, sending away an ear employee who just started. That's a manager move. Okay. The manager sees this question as black and white there's either work to do, or there's not work to do. And since the answer is no, there are no assignments that are under your name right now. Simple answers, no, go away. However, A leader recognizes that marina is an eager employee. She's not the type of person to sit around and be comfortable being idle and unproductive all day. Okay. She obviously has the capacity to not only do the work that's assigned to her, but do it quickly. And she's done so much work that she's run out. Well, can we do. A leader sees her potential in her capacity to complete the work and her willingness to actually complete it. This is a person who. She might be moving up in the company in the future. This is a good idea. Maybe we don't know for sure. I'm just saying. There are a lot of good sites. So what happens next? If I'm a leader, then I'm going to offer marina a few options just for 10. There's no work to do. There isn't any work to do. What can I do if I'm in charge? Well, here's number one. You can allow her to help with somebody else's work. Okay. You know, Joe is always falling behind on his stuff anyway, so maybe she could help with Joe's work or. Maybe you could allow her to take one of those pending projects that are just sitting in the queue, waiting for. Whoever she can take one of those or third option. You can allow her. And I know this is crazy. You can allow her to learn one of your responsibilities. Because you are secure in your leadership. And you're comfortable teaching others how to do your job because you're a leader. Okay. That being said. Maybe none of those are possible options. Okay. Maybe there's just nothing you could do option for. You could ask. Marina. Is there something that you could work on in your own personal land or you have to be at the office obviously, but maybe there's something that you could work on for yourself while you're waiting. For your work to pick up, right? Some companies, they have busy seasons ebbs and flows. Maybe this is a normal thing. We don't know. That being said. If she doesn't have anything personal to work on. I can surely suggest a book or two or four or a podcast. There are, there are so many free resources. Okay. Moving on. A leader can execute one of these options in order to keep marina interested. Because again, we want her to feel challenged, interested. We want her to feel valued in a role. Furthermore, if this is a standard for this industry where it's ebbs and flows of work, There should probably also be a documented list of things to do for everyone when the work gets to be. Okay. Next thing. So marina moves on. She doesn't feel totally dejected because she, you know, she did what she could do. She did her work, she went to talk to her manager. She let her know if there's anything else I can do. I'm happy to do it. Okay, cool. No, there's not fine. That's fine. So she continues to plug away with the little work that she has. Um, she notices that there's something, there's an issue with one of her accounts. Probably because she's looking really closely because she has so much time. But anyway, so she notices an issue with one of her house becomes very alarmed because she sees that this one issue is actually affecting a lot of counts. A lot of people and furthermore, the company's reputation is. Being tarnished because of this. So she's upset. She's in a hurry. She wants to hurry up and tell Karen, because Karen obviously needs to know this is big. So she gets into Karen's office. Finally scheduled a meeting, gets in there, says, Karen, you're not going to believe this. Look at this mistake. Do you know what Karen does? Well, Karen has not surprised. Do you know why Karen is not surprised? Because Sharon, he knows about it. Yeah. She knows about it. Now she's known about it for quite some time. She's known about it since 1972. Marina does not understand how could this be? How could you allow this thing to con. Okay. Karen explains to her. Listen, this is the way that the company was set up. Originally. These are the processes we've had in place. The procedures are already here. I. I recognize this as an issue, but the higher ups are already aware of it. And this is just the way that we do things. Does somebody want to do the Debbie downer thing route? Okay. Marina's having a hard time accepting that we would actually allow our customers to be negatively impacted by something for so long and not even doing anything about it. But Karen assured her it's fine. Again, manager, it's understandable that some companies have a long standing issues that just they persisted for so long that the general consensus is acceptance. I understand that. Uh, leader, however, recognize that, although this is issue is longstanding and has a general consensus of acceptance. It is not sending well with marina. She's obviously upset about it. It's also impacting the customer negatively not to mention. A leader has the emotional intelligence to recognize that a marina feels strongly about this and B we're already having a problem because She doesn't have any work to do. So this could be a recipe for success because there was a problem that kind of unfixable, or it seems, and then she doesn't have any work to do. Maybe. I don't know, you could. Challenge her to, Hey marina, do you think you could figure this out? 'cause, you know what you mentioned, you didn't have any work to do. So maybe you could do the little work that you have and in the spare time you could work on figuring out a solution for this problem. That's negatively impacting the customers and the company. Okay. Or not, or, Hey, we could just. Hide in the corner. Okay. I'll leader, a confident, secure leader. Empathizes with marina on behalf of the customer and challenges her to. Investigate further marina leaves the meeting. She's becoming more and more restless considering she has even less work to do now. And the issue exists in the world and the customer is being negatively impacted. People are complaining. People are calling her complaining about the issue is. She can't do anything about it. So she feels helpless and she's bothered and she feels bad. I mean, she's. Wants to do well. Right? So she decides, well, it wouldn't hurt to ask the other supporting departments what their process is. And maybe we could figure something out together after all marina has a ton of experience in this field. She's solved other complex issues before in the past and other roles, why not try to, you know, check it out. So she does. And would you believe after investigating with the other departments? Figures out us. Um, so she's so excited. She's typing it up. She's documenting all the things and she sends it. Over to Karen right before she walks into the meeting. And she says, Karen, guess what? I have this great idea. It's going to fix all the things and there's option one, option two, and everything's going to be great and the customers are going to be fine. And Karen says, um, Actually, no. We're not going to do that. No, we're not going to do that. I'm actually. We're not going to do that. Marina does not even understand what is happening right now, but I do. Let me tell you what's happening. Karen is upset. Karen is upset because she's been interrupted again by said, employee who is new and. Apparently knows everything. She's also feeling inadequate because she had just sat marina out the office. But two weeks ago saying that this problem couldn't be solved. And yet here she is with the solution. And also she's feeling threatened because she's been in this job for a year and little newbie hire over here is kicking her butt up and down the field. All that to say. She lashed out. She told marina, no, we are not going to do this. We are not going to move forward with any of these solutions. In fact, you need to go back to her desk and do what I told you to do, which is forget about the whole dang thing. I know you're out of your seat holler. And right now I know. Because it's crazy. For the third time, understandable that Karen has feelings of anger and inadequacy in this moment because these emotions are rallied. However, it's not appropriate. To take your emotions out on someone who reports to you. He never is. A leader would have never been in the situation to begin with, because if you take a plus B equals C, given the two opportunities, we've already had to address this, we wouldn't have been in this situation. However, A leader recognizes that their team has needs. They recognize not only the needs, but finds creative solutions and provides them with encouragement and empowerment to do the dang thing. That isn't my friends. That is story of marina. Let me summarize for you today of all things that we learned. Okay. # 1. Leaders actively listen. They empower employees to explore solutions and provide guidance. They foster an environment where team members feel valued and supported and their contributions. #2. Leaders maintained professionalism, managing their emotions and recognizing opportunities for growth. Constructive feedback and encouragement are essential for employee development. #3. Leaders encourage employee initiative. Recognizing the potential for innovative solutions and providing support to address concerns. This is fostering a culture of continuous. improvement. #4 & #5. The leaders acknowledged individual strengths and proactively engage their employees, providing challenges that will align with their actual skills. Okay. These are the lessons for today. If you want to learn about something specific, let me know. I would love to be able to help you send me a message on Instagram, YouTube, or 8 6 4 6 1 9 1 6 8 3. And maybe I will put your topic on a future episode. Remember to like share comment all of the things so that we can make the world a better place to work. Thanks for listening. TM, take care and see you next week.