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June 2022 – Question Of The Month
June 27, 2022 - By Wendy Lambourne, Director, MA Industrial and Organisation Psychology, Registered Psychologist with SA Medical & Dental CouncilShare by Email
Question: Does Legitimate Leadership oppose the management of people?
Answer: Our plea is: please don’t manage people, lead them. Because when you manage people you reduce them to the status of things. Legitimate Leadership has a clear view of the distinction between management and leadership: management is what you apply to things; leadership pertains to people. For organisational success and sustained results – organisational excellence, in other words – both management and leadership are required. Things like finances, systems, structures, facilities etc. – all need to be managed well. As the American change management expert John Kotter says, in most companies today there is far more of an emphasis on management than leadership. As a result organisations are over-managed and under-led. So again we say, lead more and manage less.
