Understanding Managerial Leadership

According to me a "Managerial Leadership" is a situation in which a person fulfils expectations of an organization AND also of his/her team members. Being a manager is a great responsibility, but understanding the role is more critical. Yes, it’s a position where you can show your authority, but it’s certainly not the only role one should play.

I therefore wanted to highlight some of my learnings after being in this position for past 7 years. I will surely share more of these learnings in upcoming blogs to keep it short and crisp.

1. In this position your organization and supervisors will expect you to manage planning, resource management, managing risks and work towards achieving organizational goals. At the same time your team looks to you for setting strategic goals for them, resolve their problems and facilitate their personal growth.

2. While mentoring new subordinates and relatively less experienced team members we tend to constantly tell team about "How I used to do it". Instead start telling them the goal we as a team should achieve and some best possible ways of getting there and then step back and let them try, learn and make mistakes while reaching that goal. This way you will aid in personal growth and improvement in competencies of your team members.

3. While doing so, please remember that being authoritative is good (sometimes) - it will help you get things done, but being influential is much better because then your subordinates and other colleagues understand the importance of doing what they are doing. They then put their heart and soul to the work, come up with ideas, develop problem solving skills, become more assertive. And this will happen because your team choose to do it willingly.

4. This transition made me also realize the difference between a manager and a leader. Like focusing on people than on tasks. Being influential rather than authoritative. Leading it from front to be more inspirational than being execution centric. Also, it’s totally OK to show your weaknesses and accepting deficiencies and seeking help to overcome them. This will make you more mature and live in reality. I think manager is a "title" given to you but leadership is a "quality" you gain.

Overall, managerial leadership involves effectively balancing the roles of manager and leader to achieve organizational objectives while inspiring, empowering, and developing individuals and teams to reach their full potential.