Instead of distinguishing managers from leaders, we should be seeing managers as leaders and leadership as management practiced well.

While we may be able to separate the two forms conceptually, asserts Mintzberg, you can’t disentangle the two in practice. This has a certain resonance with me. It has always felt a tad artificial to separate leading and managing, although our programs have positioned the former as more influencing and big picture thinking, vs. the skill-based nature of pure managing.

So, how do leading and managing intermingle as the “manager” goes about her duties? Mintzberg has a practical model of what the manager does. She works her magic by operating on three planes, each of which involves both an internal (i.e. within the unit) and external focus.

1. Information – Collecting, organizing, authoring and communicating information out into the wider organization and beyond as well as down into her own unit. She uses information to suggest, cajole, and frame certain actions and decisions on the part of unit employees and others outside the unit.
2. People – Encouraging, helping and developing (i.e. leading) individuals and teams within her unit to make decisions, get things done and develop new capacities to perform. On the “people plane” you also have linking to people outside the unit, for example, building relationships with individuals in other departments, customers, vendors, public officials, and so on. Here is where a manager’s networking skill is so critical.
3. Action – Internally, it means getting directly involved, hands-on, in key decisions, projects and problems. Beyond the unit, the manager makes deals to mobilize support for the unit’s needs and interests by exchanging reciprocal power and influence.

When you think about it, working these three planes internally and externally, the manager has to slide back and forth, frequently during the same interaction, from leading to managing. At one moment she is directing her staff to move on certain priority tasks. Then she represents her department at a senior team meeting. Then she negotiates with finance for leniency on reporting requirements just this month. Then she meets with an irate customer company, listening and problem-solving their complaint.

In the end, says Mintzberg, managing is a “soft” craft (with an element of art thrown in), not a hard science. This is why management training and leadership development can be a difficult “sell” to technically-oriented decision makers. Craft though managing may be, the strategic importance of developing the leadership roles of your managers is in no way diminished.

If you are charged with selecting development programs, particularly in human interaction areas, be careful that your own level of  knowledge and mastery of the skills to be taught doesn’t blind you to what your trainees really need. I encounter this particularly with Human Resource professionals and well-read line managers. They have attended all the conferences, heard all the latest gurus, taken all the feedback assessments and instruments, learned all the latest concepts and jargon, read all the books by Tom Peters, Pat Lencioni, John Maxwell, Stephen Covey,…

The fact is most of your managers who came up through professional, technical, administrative, sales, and blue collar labor streams often have not been exposed to even the more well-known approaches and skills of leadership. Instead, they have been busy in their career honing their functional, specialized knowledge and craft.

Don’t be afraid to deliver the fundamentals around people management. Your people still need to master the “blocking and tackling” of management: listening, using questions, setting expectations, delivering feedback, handling conflict, articulating a vision, motivating employees, managing priorities, confronting poor performers, etc. It may be old material to you and you may be a seasoned role model in these areas but most of your managers have a good way to go yet before they master these skills.

The classic management and leadership skills are archetypal success skills for the human species. Now, we may present some of these at a deeper level and demand more from a group of your experienced managers, but the topics are the same. Take listening, for example.

• You can learn how to listen to someone and minimize your attention drifting while you do. That’s at the basic level.
• At a deeper level, you can listen for what’s not said or gestured but might still be part of the person’s deeper message and feelings.
• At yet a deeper level, you can listen to what’s going on inside you as you receive the other person’s message.

Any one of these skill levels could be taught under the same title, “Mastering Listening Skills.”

So, don’t be seduced by the latest “in” thing around leadership and management. Look at what your target managers really need to get the results you want in your organization. Even if they have been exposed to a particular skill before, how well are they demonstrating it? Could they benefit from a refresher or rather from a more advanced application of this competency?

Exemplars in any field never stop revisiting and practicing the basics.