Leadership & Management: Leaders and managers relate to people paradoxically

Sometimes our intuition takes us down the wrong road.  That is why there are maps and that is why we do research.  For example, many people have painted a mental picture of managers as reclusive bureaucrats, holed up in some cubicle, having little or no contact with real people.  On the other hand, leaders are often thought to be out in the public eye, constantly surrounded with throngs of followers, spending all their time working with other people.  Unfortunately for our mental models, research has found this not to be exactly the case, even though there are grains of truth in both.

It turns out that managers are those who surround themselves with people and avoid solitary work.  People and processes are the very tools of management;  internal, solitary work lacks these essential managerial components.  However, our mental images are often confused by an inherent paradox surrounding managers.  While managers surround themselves with people, at the same time, they show low emotional involvement with them.  Everyone knows the manager, but no one knows them deeply and the converse of the relationship is true as well.  Managers know other people more by the roles they play than by the people as individuals.

Managers do not relate empathically with others.  Sure, they can see that emotions may be stirring, but they are not particularly capable of dealing with those emotions so they tend to treat emotional signals as cues that things may be getting too stirred up.  Since managers avoid risk (as noted in previous columns) and emotionality is, by definition, not rationality, emotional signals from others cause the manager to put on the brakes to deeper feelings.  As a result, managers are often seen as cold or calculating rather than warm and feeling.  Of course, there are advantages to such managerial behaviors.  In times of chaos, managers are the perfect choice to bring order and stability to a situation where work needs to be done.

While it is true that leaders often move and inspire the masses, they are more apt to do this by engaging in much solitary reflection and personal struggle and by surrounding themselves with a small, but intensely devoted ring of close supporters.  Likewise, the emotional attachment to those close to the leader are apt to be deep, empathic and heartfelt.  In a term popular today, leaders score highly in "emotional intelligence."

But there is also a seeming paradox with leaders as well.  One research project examined the presidents of the United States and categorized them into "great leaders" or "not great leaders."  When examining the biographies of the presidents, we discovered that the "not great leaders" were described in flat emotional terms (i.e., like managers) while the "great leaders" were not only described in strong emotional terms, but in emotional terms that ran the spectrum from deep love to strong hate-often by the very same people!  Leaders create strong love-hate relationships.  Is this rational?  Of course not, but when we are dealing with emotions, why should we expect anything to be rational?  But this is the arena in which leaders play the game.

Leaders stir people to change at all levels.  Leaders don't just convince peoples' minds that there is a rational course of action, although they may certainly engage in this process.  They go beyond that to move peoples' spirits and their very souls.  Leaders are not content with people just following orders and creating movement.  Leaders, often driven by obsessions of future states, need people committed to the goal so they will create new and better ways to help achieve the objective.

In today's organizational world with the turbulent environment, highly competent management is essential.  Chaos is occurring naturally and managers have the natural inclination to bring order and stability.  They may seem cool to those around them but the rationality they bring to disorder is necessary.  However, in yet another paradox, leaders are also more needed today because the chaotic world may mean that our old systems simply won't work in the new order.  Bringing rationality, if it is based on old and outdated systems, is not right, even if it is stabilizing.  Leaders are needed to mobilize the feelings of the followers to change.

In the movie Gladiator, Russell Crowe plays the general/slave/gladiator, Maximus.  According to a straw poll, viewers unanimously felt that Maximus was a leader, not a manager.  He was emotionally empathic, he was comfortable being alone, and although he led armies, he was close to his inner circle.  He melded a team of gladiators.  But he also stirred emotions in others-some to love, some to hate, and some to both.  If you have been around a leader, you know these feelings.  If you are a leader you have experienced these emotions directed at you.  Nobody said leadership was easy, but it is as essential in today's world as is management.

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