In leadership we are seeking to help the people we are leading discover their purpose and potential. Each leader also may have certain goals, objectives and processes that they are supposed to meet and follow-through on, however the ultimate objective of leadership is the development of our followers.

As leaders we need to engage, equip and empower. As leaders, our followers need to know that we care, that we are available to them, that what we offer is to help them and open new doors for them. In an overly-simplistic reductionism I would assert that leadership is about the people and management is about the work. In other words our leadership ought to be for the development of followers (their lives, abilities, skill-set and productivity) but our management ought to focused on company/organization objectives, benchmarks, action-steps and of course the bottom-line.

We need to lead in such a way that our followers know that we are for them: they can come to us in times of need, in difficulties, in moments of frustration; we want to hear their ideas and we are interested in their personal and professional lives. But we should manage in such a way that our ever-developing followers understand their role in the greater machinery of the organization and the importance of getting things done. Both leadership and management are important and each have their role, but let us remember you really can’t manage people (have you ever tried to manage your spouse?) and your can’t lead inanimate objects like company objectives. Let us as leaders make the development of our followers our primary objective and watch how quickly people begin to grow, unite and flourish as persons and as workers.

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