Leadership is sexy while management is kind of tough, and that’s where we get into coddling, which is managers who really don’t manage.
On this episode of the Navigator podcast, Brad Dempsey, CEO at Solutions360, joins Brad Malone to discuss how these days, it takes courage to manage, and it needs to be linked with leadership.
Let’s start by defining those terms; leading, managing, and coddling.
Leading is about setting a direction
Leaders inspire people and there is a motivational aspect to it. Am I proud to come to work?
Leading is generating the future that people want to attach to. And anybody can be a leader. The higher up you are, the more impact you may have, but leadership is intrinsic to the person, it’s not positional.
Managing is a control function.
Management is about taking those leadership strategies and saying, “How will we go achieve it?” It’s planning, it’s executing, monitoring, it’s human resources development and performance management. All of these things really tie into management.
Coddling is typically not having any ramifications for the wrong behavior.
Coddlers allow and tolerate incorrect behavior, which creates different quality standards for different people. This becomes very personality based.
“That’s the coddle – that everybody’s special. It kind of has a feel that everybody ought to get a trophy. But if you don’t perform your job well, we need to call you out on that.” Brad Malone
“Competence is if an individual knows how to perform a task. Behavior is if they choose to do it. These two are very distinct, and I think we coddle people’s behavior.”
The key to coddling is it’s an excuse not to confront, generated by the person who should be managing, and that is just a culture killer.
So, it takes courage these days to manage, and it needs to be linked with leadership. Again, leadership has to set the direction.
Also on the podcast:
How do leaders motivate people?
Are people motivated by nature, or is this something we can instill and build within our organization?
