kids, leading and managing

Or why spending a month working in a kindergarten should be obligatory for MBAs.

Nice Cotê d'Azur airport, departure hall, eight thirty in the morning:

A small chap, about two years old, discovered that one of the flower beds was full of small and round stone pellets. Breaking into a huge grin he grabbed what his little hands could hold and plodded over to the middle of the hall where he happily spread his spoils.

His mother leapt to her feet, rushed over and started to pick up pellets while shouting "no Robin, no, no!" to Robin who was over at the flower bed again. He turned to his mother and smiled broadly as you could see his thoughts "ah, mother wants to play too, great!".

When Robin arrived carrying a second load for his mother to pick up her orders were stern; "absolutely not, no, no!" grabbing his hand to give it a quick slap.

Robin's face changed immediately, "hey, what's this, mother wanted to play and now she slaps me??". Robin was confused and quite disturbed by this surprising turn of events.

Sitting a few feet away I was itching to send the mother away as I had a different plan:

Go over to the loose pellets, happily turn to Robin and show him how much fun it is to chase loose pellets and gather them one by one then walking them back together for some noisy pellet distribution in the flower bed.
Wrapping up with some "ah" and "oohs" over the return of order in the departure hall.

Or something along that line while fully embracing his game, then developing it towards a direction that would gain us both. Giving leadership a chance.

It is truly amazing how easily adults revert to command and control mode, aka managing, when surprised. In particular when they know they're scrutinised in departure halls and supermarkets, "Oh gawd, everybody sees how bad a parent I am, how little control I have, must get in control immediately!"

But toddlers do not understand being managed, such efforts are met with tears and tantrums, and later when they're teenagers they tell you to your face while at last becoming adults they swallow hard and feel miserable.

Toddlers understand leadership, somebody they respect showing the way, teenagers expect leadership while adults work better under real leadership and no managing.

Every MBA course should have a section where the students are responsible for little people, in a kindergarten, for at least a month.

[Bonus: Alfred did a post here (comments limited to Windows Live ID, so comment is here).
He suggests kindergarten is too easy, let CEOs try last year high school students! Have to agree to that having spent all my student vacations being a substitute:

If the first subject with a new class was one of my favourites (maths, physics etc.) I earned respect immediately, a respect that lasted. If the first subject was one of my weak areas (geography say) I got no respect and could never turn the back to the class without risking flying apple-cores and other missiles ;)

Perfect bio-feedback on leadership abilities I'll say!]

Comments

[Ian Prince]

Sig, great post, can totally relate. Isn't play more fun and rewarding than command and control!

Not to mention slapping, ouch :-(

niclaquesnifessees.org is a great resource for French-speaking parents in this respect.

Ian.

[bren]

:-)
nice post Sig!

[John Seiffer - Business Coach]

Your distinction between "somebody they respect showing the way" and "command and control" is a useful one. However, it's not the distinction between leadership and management. It's the distinction between two styles. Either style can be applied to leadership OR management.

Leadership is nothing more than getting a person (or group) to follow you. It can be done with respect or by command and it is useful, maybe even necessary to some degree, but highly overrated in business.

True management, on the other hand is the hard work of developing an environment that supports people to be successful in a common goal. This can not usually be done from the bottom up but neither can it be done entirely from the top down.
http://thesmallbusinesscoach.com/blog/2007/03/15/plumbing-vs-philosophy/

[sig]

John,

kind of respectfully disagree there (as long as we talk living beings):

- Managing is by holding hand or using whip (managere - horse dressage).
- Lead on the other hand is to walk up front and show the way.

Is a shepherd "leading" the flock? I'd rather say he'll be walking at the tail end of it whistling at his dog. The sheep would not "follow" the leader.

Of course, semantics comes in play as one sometimes talks about "respect" for the one who wields the whip, but I'd rather use "fear" there. Ditto for follower; non-fear respect can induce people to follow as in freely follow. But I would not call somebody a "follower" if induced by fear.

Thus I would not talk about somebody "following you" in the sense of command & control, rather somebody who's practical and finds doing as ordered the lesser pain.

I do agree with your last paragraph - "prepare the environment" (as Maria Montessori would have said) is the basis, clear goals and values the rest thus not all top down. But organising the environment equals managing the environment, not the people.

Actually, I think managing people and leading people are mutually exclusive as command and control ruins the respect needed for leading... :)

[sig]

John, see you picked up on this in your blog (but alas, no comments open there!).

Noted one sentence there - "But just leading people will not develop a scalable organization."

And to that I agree, and my fault that I'm forgetting a most important part: Organisational hierarchies, the current only deliverer of the Business Model (how to use resources etc.) is command & control by design and thus requires managing.

The thing is that I question the value over time of that model - organisational hierarchy as resources use structure - as it is rather not perfect nor do I think it's naturally befitting humans.

Leading to the question - what alternative is there? Well, not much directly interchangeable today, but many forces are moving in the direction - flat organisations, social media, etc. and myself with what we do. Time will show how it all pans out. One day etc.