Great Leader vs. Great Manager Is There A Difference?

When you are confident that you are a good Manager, does that mean that you are automatically a good Leader? Leadership should not be considered to be the same as management. They are different, yet not in the way most people presuppose. Leadership is not something that requires a specific personality profile, such as one requiring charm or a sense of inquisitiveness. Leadership is not a replacement for management nor is it to be thought of as being even better than management. Leadership and management are two distinctly different systems that must both be alive and complimentary in every successful organization. Management is more about system interactions, processes and accountability that keep the organization running. Leadership is directly responding to change and the use of it applied to improving or supporting others.

The challenge is to combine great leadership with great management, skillfully balancing the two. Do you see your company as being over managed and under led? Are you developing your leadership capacity? Additionally, have you identified someone within your organization as the next leader?

Finding - The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything - Book Review

Ken Robinson is one smart and funny guy. Before you read this review you have to watch this TED video - he has gotten millions of views on the web. It was this video that inspired me to read his book.



In The Element Sir Ken Robinson explores how to find your Element. He draws on many sources and some extremely interesting interviews and research. This includes the fact that Paul McCartney did not even like music classes in school, although he loved making music. Can you even imagine what it must feel like to know you had Paul McCartney in your Music Class and you could not inspire him. He uses stories like this one to pull the reader in to his book and make a compelling discussion on how institutions like our school systems are leading our minds away from our own element and replacing it with conformity.

As a TEDalcoholic I must confess I enjoyed the book - I found many references to the TED talks that I have watched or listen to over the years. As well as many authors on the subject of creativity, flow and mind mapping like Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi or Tony Buzan. He both explores the micro and macro nature of learning the element as it relates to you and to the world. Do yourself a favor a find The Element first at the store then in yourself.

"I turned my head for a moment and it become my life"

These were the prophetic words of an AT&T executive when working with David Whyte in one of his Seminars. She was speaking to how these moments in life happen when you simply turn your head in a different direction and it seems something shifts and your life is instantly different. It struck me last night when at a Marc Cohn concert ( wrote song "walking in Memphis"). He spoke of early in his career 1986 when he was stuck and did not like the music he was creating. He followed James Taylor's wisdom, find new geography. With that he took off for a trip to Memphis where he met Muriel Davis Wilkin, a gospil singer, who sang ever Friday night at the Hollywood Cafe in Memphis. As the song goes "Now Muriel plays piano every Friday at the Hollywood". She is the one in the song.

She invited him to her church that Sunday only to find Al Green (at the time a little known Reverend preacher). He may not have been reborn but he did have a rebirth to his music. It was after this experience he winds up having his break through in creating great music not only for himself but for the rest of us.

Later that trip he meets his wife Cindy and winds up writing several hit songs about her and their child together. He turned his head for a moment and it became his life.

How often do you step away from your life to see what can happen? It is not luck that lead him to these events that unfolded. He was trying by looking for new geography looking for a way to change. A way to enter life differently. He did not wait for something to come to him, he took action. By putting himself in a new place he began to think differently.