Book Short: Why Not Both?

Book Short:  Why Not Both?

Craig Hickman's Mind of a Manager, Soul of a Leader talks about how tapping the natural tension between managers and leaders allows an organization to achieve its best.  It covers dozens of topical areas and for each compares how a prototypical manager handles the area (practical, reasonable, decisive) vs. how a prototypical leader handles it (visionary, empathetic, and flexible).  Of course, the book describes the ideal organization as "balanced an integrated" between the two extremes. 

My take for startups, a topic not addressed in the book, is that the job of the entrepreneur CEO is to be both manager and leader, and try to do both roles effectively without driving the team nuts.  The book says that "managers wield authority, leaders apply influence."  Entrepreneurs have to be comfortable with both styles.  Thanks to my colleague Stephanie Miller for giving me a copy of this one.

Comments

[Edmund]

Well I guess I just gotta to say that leadership is really a huge topic. I gotta confess that most of what I learnt about is from Dr Joh C. Maxwell.

One concept I learnt is to focus in one's area of strength, and delegate the areas of weakness to someone who is strong in.

"If there is someone who can do the 80% as well as I can, I'll delegate the job to him"

This allows the leader to focus on areas that he/she functions best and yield more results basing on the 20/80 rule.

Also as the person work on HIS area of strength .. both parties benefit ..

I am not a practicioner of that yet but I just thought it made quite some sense.