Historically, writers who have tried to define leadership as something different from management have focused on what it means to be in charge of a group. From this positional starting point, it is difficult to differentiate leadership and management except in terms of style. So, we have some writers saying that managers use formal authority to motivate employees while leaders use informal influence. A variation on this move is to say that leaders are transformational, inspiring or charismatic while managers are transactional, mechanical or controlling. In other words, leaders inspire people to go the extra mile but managers can only use basic rewards and punishments, so employee motivation for managers is a transaction, a deal, exchange or payment for services rendered.

From this perspective it is easy to draw the conclusion that leadership is just superior management. So, why not dispense with managers altogether, replacing them with leaders? We could, however, grant management a lesser role: to look after non-human resources but, given the central importance of people, management becomes a very poor relation to leadership if we think through the implications of this way of defining leadership and management.

Then there is the further assumption that leaders and managers serve the same purpose in groups - to get things done through people. The only difference is how they influence people to do their wishes. This is all very sensible if being a leader or manager means being at the head of affairs in a group.

In simpler times and with small, primitive groups, it was sufficient to think of leadership and management in such positional, hierarchical terms. Most higher animal species structure themselves along similar lines, so who are we to be any different? But the world was once much less complex and fast changing than it became in the 20^th century. Primitive groups had to face external threats in the form of hostile groups and environmental changes as well as internal conflict, but periods of relative stability were possible. Not so for those modern businesses that compete on the basis of rapid innovation. They must fight a constant war of ideas in complex, uncertain markets. Because constant change is now the order of the day, we need a more dynamic concept of leadership. The old positional model is too static. We need to understand how leadership can shift rapidly from one person to another, to be episodic action, not a static role. Similarly, complexity demands increasing specialization, forcing us to separate leadership and management and assign them quite different organizational tasks.

To create new concepts for a new reality, we should say that management takes care of everything to do with execution, leaving leadership to promote new products and services, to challenge the status quo and advocate a better way. Now, we have the immediate benefit of no longer having to define leadership and management in style terms. All we need to do is point to their group functions, just as we would for sales and marketing. Once we have spelled out the organizational functions of sales and marketing, or human resources and finance, for that matter, we have fully defined these concepts. Style becomes merely a personal matter. No doubt one style might be more effective than another for certain purposes, but all of this is situational, not part of any definition of the basic functions. Crucially, if style is situational, we can allow managers to be as transformational as they need to be to motivate high performance. They need no longer be confined to being controlling, unfeeling drones. Great managers can be highly skilled at facilitating, developing, coaching and empowering employees to realize their full potential.

The second great benefit of fully functional definitions is that leadership becomes totally freed from its association with position. That is, if leadership simply means the act of advocating a better way, then there is no reason why it cannot be shown by a front-line knowledge worker or even someone outside the group altogether. Bottom-up leadership occurs when lower level employees convince top management to change course, to adopt a new product or a better process for executing existing goals. Such leadership must be seen as a one-off act because it ends as soon as top management buys the need to change. Bottom up leaders have no power to implement their proposals so their leadership cannot have anything to do with getting things done through people. Moreover, they might not even have the skills, emotional intelligence or desire to manage people. Everything to do with getting things done must therefore be assigned to management. Leadership is sometimes viewed as a journey, but using this metaphor, we must now say that leadership only sells the tickets for the journey, that management drives the bus to the destination. This is true even where further injections of leadership are required enroute to resell the merits of a particular journey if resistance emerges.

Because we have focused so narrowly and exclusively on leadership-as-position, we have overlooked or ignored non-positional leadership. To develop a model of leadership that is non-positional, it helps to recognize how common this form of leadership is already. There are lots of examples of leadership shown by outsiders. Martin Luther King had a leadership impact on the US Supreme Court when it ruled segregation on buses unconstitutional. King had no position within the US Supreme Court or US government so he could not be involved in managing the implementation of his proposals. This means that his leadership was a brief act, not an ongoing role. Most importantly for innovation-driven businesses, bottom up leadership is similarly non-positional. Whenever front line knowledge workers convince top management to adopt a new product or process, they have shown leadership without actually managing the top team or necessarily having anything to do with implementation.

Similarly, companies like Apple Computers have leadership impacts on their competitors. Clearly, businesses that are market leaders have no managerial authority over their competitors. They do not occupy a leadership position in this sense. They only lead by example and that means simply showing the way. Managerial execution is completely up to those companies that choose to follow the market leader. Because leadership and management are so totally separate in such instances we gain a much more visible separation of the two functions than we could ever do focusing on the person at the head of a group.

Finally, all employees can show some leadership to their colleagues, without actually managing them, just by setting an example: serving customers in an exemplary way, being especially ethical or simply by working hard.

When we view leadership as an occasional act that anyone can display, we have a more dynamic concept that is more in tune with our fast changing environment. For example, in a meeting, there may be no one in the position of either formal or informal leader, but as every participant argues for a different solution to a problem, leadership shifts from one person to another. It would be a mistake to think of each person taking turns occupying a leadership role. There is no leadership role, just occasional acts of leadership.

Action Leadership

Leadership that is always an act and never a role can be called action leadership. Conventional positional leaders are still leaders of their groups even when they are asleep. As long as their group is prospering, group members are satisfied with their positional leaders even if they are doing nothing that could be recognized as leadership other than simply holding the fort and being what we want them to be. By contrast, action leadership occurs only when the actions of one person or group have a leadership impact on others. When a group is moved to change direction by the example or advocacy of others, then leadership has been shown and not otherwise. Because no one has a monopoly on good ideas, people cannot dominate a group if they have no other source of authority. Some good ideas can be so convincing that they almost speak for themselves, in which case the person showing leadership does not necessarily need to have the qualities required to become a positional leader. This is a very liberating implication of action leadership. It means that all front line employees can show some leadership, even by merely setting a hard working example for colleagues and even if they lack the qualities necessary to ascend to a positional leadership role. Actually, if we view action leadership as our general account of all leadership then there are no leadership roles, only managerial ones.

Action Leadership is Not a Relationship

It is currently fashionable to conceive of leadership as a relationship. But notice this important point: relationships are only possible between people. Leadership, viewed as a relationship, occurs between people in certain roles (leadership roles) and those who are in followership roles, whether formal subordinates or informal followers. But we can’t have a relationship with an act, not an ongoing, two-way one at least. We can point to the action of someone as the event that changed our view of something, so we can have some sort of relationship with an event, but again it is a one-off impact that has changed us, not an ongoing, two-way relationship along the lines of what we have with people.

Those who want to define leadership as a relationship point to the fact that leadership is a relational term, meaning that it cannot occur without followers. But there are lots of relational concepts that don’t imply personal, two-way relationships between people. Take eating and drinking. These are relational terms simply because we can’t eat or drink without eating or drinking something. Similarly, impact is a relational term because it implies two objects, one to do the impacting and one to receive it. Actually, all forms of influence are relational in this sense. Selling a product, implies a buyer. You might be influenced to live a more green lifestyle by seeing a green film but this influence does not imply a relationship between you and anyone else – the film maker or anyone in it.

The bottom line is that leadership, like all influence, is a relational concept but it can still be a one-way impact between people who may not even know each other let alone be in a two-way relationship where mutual influence is possible.

On the other hand, there are clearly ongoing two way relationships between managers and their teams. Facilitation is an essential management tool and that means fostering two-way dialogue based on open, trusting relationships. Coordination of effort would otherwise be impossible. When managers show leadership, however, this is still a one-way impact. Conversely, when “followers” influence their boss, they are also showing leadership. In other words, there is no such thing as followership influence on leadership because as soon as “followers” influence their “leader” the shoe is on the other foot – the former become the leader and the latter the follower.

Conclusion

We say that Newtonian physics is good enough for understanding everyday reality, like apples falling out of trees. Similarly, positional leadership is still a workable idea for simple groups. But a more general theory of leadership, as in physics, demands that we use a broader concept such as action leadership. This is the only way we can account for disparate acts of leadership that do not entail being in a position of authority over people. Leadership shown by people in charge of groups is also occasional action, but being in charge of people is only a special case of leadership. It cannot be our model for defining leadership in general. But the only way we can limit leadership to promoting new directions is if we upgrade management to take care of everything to do with getting things done through people. Being in a position of authority over others, formal or informal, means being a manager. Leadership can only be shown; it isn’t something someone can be or become. In other words, both leadership and management are group functions but only management is a group role.

 Copyright Mitch McCrimmon 2008. See his latest book for more on this topic: Burn! 7 Leadership Myths in Ashes, 2006, available through Amazon.