You don’t have to be a manager to be a leader
While being the director and part-owner of my own company, Green Shell Media — I still hold down a day job. Things are going pretty well over at Green Shell, but I still feel like as a 23 year old, getting as much corporate experience as possible is crucial before I attempt to transition to being full-time at Green Shell.
As a result, I’ve naturally been progressing up the ranks at my day job. My job title hasn’t changed (yet, its on the cards). But that doesn’t mean that I’m not progressing.
My current role within the office has put me as a technical lead, and while our manager is off — the team are collectively making decisions. We have an unofficial assistant manager but responsibility wise the office is pretty linear so the permanent staff within the team often spread out some of the tasks that are outside of their natural day-to-day responsibilities of their respective job titles.
This week, our contract scrum master and agile delivery manager asked me a question: ‘What is the difference between a leader and a manager’. Of course, he already had an answer in his head and was seeing what my response should be.
I took some time before I responded to him to come up with the best informed answer I could.
When we as workers come into situations that we do not know how to resolve by ourselves, or when we are doing work that is a little outside of our comfort zone we naturally tend to lean towards our ‘leaders’.
A leader is the person that keeps the ball rolling.
As a software developer this leader may be someone that is the most knowledgeable about the subject matter, the person who can get the answers that you need to, or simply someone that you trust to point you in the right direction. If they can help in any way to get your problem from A to B, then they’re showing leadership qualities.
A leader is approachable
Your manager may or may not be a leader. they may be entirely knowledgeable about every aspect of the business. They may have the appropriate connections to get the appropriate answers from the business. They may be empowered to make decisions with regards to unblocking the work you are stuck with. But if they aren’t approachable in the first place, they aren’t able to lead.
A leader is honest
When asked a question, a leader will always give an honest response. Never guessing the answer to a question. A leader has to be trusted, or they will not be approached again.
Now there are some times when a leader does know the answer to a question (such as budgeting, team allocations or confidential information) but cannot disclose it. The honest answer to those is ‘I’m not at liberty to answer that’.
A leader presents themselves with confidence.
Leading on from answering honestly. If you are the most knowledgeable person in the entire office, but start your sentences with ‘I think’ or ‘When I did it’ then your response goes from a 100% confident answer to something that leaves room for doubt.
A leader will instill confidence in their answer by the way they present it. If there is room for a doubt, a leader will find out so they can answer confidently. Or say that they do not know and give details of who can answer the question.
Following an ‘I don’t know’ with ‘but I think’ will either undermine the most-informed persons answer if it contradicts, or it will put blinders on the follower with regards to trying to find the answer themselves.
A leader does what they say others should do.
A leader cannot ask someone to do something as a favor if they would not do the same favor for anyone else. That should go without saying.
It comes back to being approachable, as no-one would ask anything of someone that they do not think will deliver.
A leader should care
If a leader doesn’t put pride into their work, or work hard, or pay attention to others then they won’t be equipped or trusted to answer. If you do not care about the quality of your work then your co-workers will think that you do not care about work in general, and as a result they will never approach you.
All of these qualities are things that are not job title dependent. I’d like to think that within my day to day work that I am a leader, I strive to help others if I can, answer questions honestly and in general lead by example.
My answer to that question from the beginning of this article ended up being ‘A leader doesn’t have to be a manager. But a manager should be a leader’
