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Managing People

Leadership and management are different, but both must happen for an individual to be a good leader. Leadership is the vision setting, the decision making, the allocation and mobilization of resources (human and material). The management side of leadership is working with people to maximize each one's potential. 

As a young educator just starting out, I was in a leadership position as a coach of one of our baseball teams. I had played high school football and baseball, and working with the boys on the baseball team was easy as I had experience being coached in that sport. I tried to do a lot of the things that I liked about my coaches, and not do a lot of the things I didn't like. We had success as a team, and I was fulfilled by the work I was doing with these young men.

In the fall of the next school year, I was asked to coach girls tennis. Different sport, but coaching is coaching I thought. I talked to my girls, got them going, and then coached them with the same demeanor I did my baseball boys. And that backfired for about 90% of the girls. My coaching was making several of them worse! I remember at that point talking to the head coach who had much more experience than me, and we discussed the differences in communicating with different people.

I had heard, whether it is true or not, that when Jimmy Johnson took over the Dallas Cowboys, he said to the team, "I'm going to treat you all the same, and then treat you all differently." That quote made little sense to me until I was in this situation. What I came to understand from that quote was that I could have the same standard, goals, purpose, and priorities for everyone. But HOW I got that across to everyone had to be different. I had to get to know how people respond to different modes of communication, and then meet people where they are at. 

Some people can handle a blunt assessment, they can take a directive and run with it. Others need a "compliment sandwich," in which they are praised for something, corrected or redirected on something, and then praised again. Some need to be guided through questions where they come up with their own answers. When I have gotten negative results as a leader is when I have mismanaged my communication with people. That's one of the hardest things to learn with a new team, but critical to having long term success, and getting the hockey stick results!

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