How often does someone in middle management refer to himself or herself as a “Leader”?  How often does the title “Leader” appear on a resume?  How many middle-managers think of what they do in terms of “Leading” a team?  I would venture a guess that only the few, the proud, the natural leaders actually use this terminology. 

It’s been said that things are managed—calendars, tasks, project deliverables and that people are led.  Indeed, that may be true to an extent.  But the real difference between leading and managing is the passion and aggressiveness with which something or someone is “managed”.  Think of managing as meeting expectations.  There’s nothing wrong with that—keeping the status quo is often a full-time job.  But leadership requires exceeding expectations.  Let me give you an example:

In scenario one, our middle manager heads a department of twenty people and has been doing so for fifteen years.  Part of that responsibility is evaluating each team member’s performance on an annual basis and providing the employee and management with performance reports in the company’s standard template.  By doing this, our manager is fulfilling an obligation and responsibility of the job description.

However, a Leader would go beyond that and (in the absence of company-wide standard development plans) would actually discuss growth opportunities with employees as part of the performance evaluation process.  Mentoring is something that most managers either do not do naturally or think they have time for.  But leaders will take the time to groom employees with potential, recognizing that in the long run, it makes us better leaders.  It also sets an example.

If you think back to the various “bosses” you’ve had on all of your previous jobs, there will (hopefully) be one or two that stood out in your mind as natural leaders.  No doubt there were characteristics that these people all shared that set them apart.  They were not “9-to-5”ers, they actually cared about their employees and employees’ long-term goals and satisfaction, they took risks both in business and with employees because they saw a potential payoff.  They may not have been the most educated, and they were not afraid to make mistakes.  A born leader seldom plays it safe. 

Although I am not certain that there really are born leaders, leadership does not come from just being called a leader. In the world of politics, politicians are elected to their positions of “political power” and are called leaders. The problem is, many of them have never had real experience at leading. The may have leading ideas; they may have been in policy positions but few have actually ever actually been “in charge.” Yes, they may have had influence; they may have been engaged in very high level positions, but seldom have they actually been in a place where they were accountable for being “the decision maker” or “leaders” of a group. This applies to almost everybody who has been in the legislative branch.

November 19^th is the birthday of a man for whom every leader/manager should dedicate a moment of reflection and appreciation. This man had a profound impact on the academic and the practical world of management. Indeed, he is frequently credited with being the “father of modern, professional management.” He was Austrian born, had a Doctorate in Laws, and became the most read and quoted writer on management in history. His book, Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices, represents a landmark work that essentially set the standard against all books on management are measured against. Indeed, all of his writings cover such a breadth of topics and insights, that there are few ideas about leadership and management that he did not explore.

This management thinker had a truly profound impact on me. I read everything he ever wrote, and found his insights powerful and timeless. He wrote 39 books and his ideas permeate our current thinking. He coined the term “knowledge worker” and was intensely focused on how the work place was dramatically changed by the emergence of workers who used their minds instead of their muscles. He taught and wrote until he was 92 years old, and continued with profound thoughts until his death at 95.

By now, all of you who have ever read a leadership or management book, know that this is the birthday of Peter Drucker. Drucker truly created the profession of management, but most importantly, he knew how to balance the mechanical aspects of planning, organizing, controlling and directing with the true role of the manager, the leadership of the humans who execute the work. Drucker was particularly concerned about the need for managers to focus on the changing society and how they needed to change with it. He knew that the “knowledge worker” was where the future work place was, and he admonished us to recognize that leading the knowledge worker was a very different challenge than overseeing the manual labor of the farm or the factory of the 19th century.

My writings, and the use of the word Love, I believe would not have shocked Peter Drucker, because he knew that the staff we lead, is the key to organizational success. He was a very warm and philosophically controlled intellectual, who could walk in the halls of academe with great presence and credibility; while in the next minute consult with the leaders of organizations from very small to very large. He had a keen sense of understanding the challenges of leadership, and could dispense sound and actionable advice to any who were open to learn. He was truly a teacher and mentor to leaders, worldwide, but his great love was to help professional managers in the world of work that was mostly entrepreneurial and corporate life.

Although I believe that Lead with Love is a substantial contribution to the current thinking of leadership, in part, I think that it is because so many managers/leaders have lost the vision of Peter Drucker. In essence, Lead with Love is a journey “Back to the Future.” Yes, I am asking everybody to reach back to the truths from a visionary and mentor named Peter Drucker, and admonishing every leader to revisit his wisdom.

I stress the Love concept because we must think of the whole person and the whole organization and recognize that the humans who work in it, are the key to its success. There is no way that the old “straw boss” mentality from the cotton fields or the hard core 19^th century factory, can work in a world of knowledge workers. These workers are smarter, better educated, better trained and rewarded for their ability to think. We must love them if we are to understand them, let alone lead them. I am convinced that Peter Drucker would be using the very same terms to describe the concepts we insist on in Lead with Love.

I, for one, will pause on the 19^th and remember the great debt I owe him for helping me find my way through the challenges of management theory and practice. Much of that transition is because I listened to Peter Drucker as a student of leadership, and a manager who wanted to be a better leader. I am only the thinker and practitioner that I am, because I discovered the greatness of his thought, and allowed myself to develop my own thoughts about how to become a man who learned how to Lead with Love.

You may ask, “Why use the word love when the word like would be easier? Why not say that every leader must like people?”

For our purpose, the word love is more accurate and less confusing than the word like. Indeed, the proposition that leaders must like those they lead is flawed. When you like a person, what does that mean? Usually it means that person’s personality characteristics, core beliefs, character traits, or even physical appearance, for some reason, appeal to either your emotions or logical thought. The person may have treated you nicely, smiled at you on a day you were unhappy, complimented you when you needed confidence building, or helped you think through a personal or business problem. You may even have an unexplained bond with that person, which made you feel an emotional attraction almost immediately. You may have nothing in common or everything in common, but you feel comfortable being around that person.