People: Manage or Lead?

Years ago when our children were young, during our visit to the Epcot Center we encountered a futuristic transportation exhibit which was titled “People-Movers”. The concept pertained to how to manage the movement of large masses of people between destinations in the future.

 

In more recent times, I have encountered a somewhat similar business term referred to as “People Managers”. In a number of instances, I’ve seen this term translated as being interchangeable with Human Resource Management.

 

One of the resources I encountered on this subject stated that there were 7 specific categories of function associated with people management. More specifically, they were identified as:

 

Employee Motivation

Manage Yourself
Giving Feedback
Managing in Wartime
Organizing People  
Team Building
Recruiting and Hiring

Of the seven people management categories cited above, only recruiting and hiring are truly HR functions.

Over the course of the past decade or so, and with the aid of ever advancing technology, more and more organizations have succumbed to the practice of micromanaging every aspect of their organization including their greatest asset… their “people”.

 

All the while, companies are employing more and more robotic technology into their operations, which is at the same time serving to dehumanize/devalue their people through either job elimination,  micromanagement or people managing.

 

This should be the red flag that raises the salient question… Should people be managed or led?

 

I for one believe that people should be “led”. There are a number of reasons that I choose to take this position:

 

Employee performance is first and foremost rooted in personal “attitudes” which will ultimately result in your organization’s success or failure. It’s certainly not difficult to grasp the concept that you will attract better results with honey (leadership), than vinegar (micromanaging people).

 

Every individual has their own unique set of values & beliefs, thought patterns and personal attributes. Given the facts of human nature, none of these factors can in fact be managed by another human being. Moreover, you will be going against the grain of both the individual and organizational productivity if you try to. It would be equivalent to trying to have every employee have the same pattern of heartbeats and heart rate.

 

The single greatest issue with employee turnover and diversity in the workplace is the strong sense of not being “valued”. The truth of the matter is that people don’t want to be managed. What they truly and dearly want is to be valued and accepted as a viable member of a team.

 

How many times does industry, business and government have to practice top-down enforcement practices of rules, policies and procedures before they finally realize that it simply doesn’t get people to do great work or produce great results. To the contrary, managing people literally cripples the organization, stifles imaginations and kills creativity, for which the eventual outcome is a failure to innovate.

 

In observing and working with highly successful organizations throughout my career, I have observed many types of managers such as sales managers, production managers and office managers to name a few. As “managers”, their direct responsibility was to manage the work flow of their respective department, manage the assignment of work tasks and facilitate the directives of the organization’s executive team. Their job as a manager was entirely about managing the “processes” that made the organization’s wheels turn and which in turn generated the desired results as dictated by the organization’s vision and mission.

 

Regardless of the future destination that you are driving your organization toward, the principle for organizational success has not in spite of technological advancement changed.

 

Sharpen your focus on managing your processes, developing your talent base (people) and create future leaders that will take your organization where it wants to go.

 

As your valued resource partner, we stand ready to assist your organization, its leadership and your people to… Learn more… Do more… Become more.

 

Copyright © 2015 Developing Forward | Thomas H. Swank, CBC