The book addresses a topic high stakes dialogues, that are highly common in day-to-day lives of managers. The book helps the reader understand the foundations of dialog and elements of the dialog that turn it into a “crucial conversation”. The authors cover the traps crucial conversations and show how often and easy we lose the ability to maintain a productive dialog and instead defer to an instinctive flight or fight response. More important though, the book offers a lot of tools, tricks and techniques that allow to choose or change communication patterns. For example one of them offers almost a fail-safe method for conflict resolution:

1. Start with heart (Am I acting like I really want?)
2. Learn to Look (Am I going to silence or violence? / fight or flight)
3. Make it Safe (Is safety at risk?)
4. Master My Stories (What is my story?)
5. State My Path (Am I really open to others’ views?)
6. Explore Other Paths (Am I actively exploring others’ views?)
7. Move to Action (How will we make decisions?)

Of course taken out of context this might appear too simple or even silly, fortunately the book is filled with solid realistic examples from business and personal communications that communicate the intended points without distracting from the flow of the book.

The book is easy to read, extremely engaging and very helpful.  I recommend it as five star / must read.

Anyone who has ever been on one of those trips knows that the key to having fun and enjoying these trips is careful planning. Even a day trip on a familiar trail can be easily ruined by lack of preparation. Planning takes time, as a matter of fact a lot. For some of outdoors enthusiasts planning trips becomes a full time job. But how many of us can afford to spend so much time in planning? As the result we have to limit what we do based on how much time we can allocate to planning, for many that leads to not more than a couple of events a year.

But back to my friend, how does he manage to pack so much in his schedule? Well, his secret is very simple. He has check lists for everything – camping trip, skiing weekend, rigging the boat, etc. Simple and tremendously powerful timesaver. Going out to BBQ party with your friends? Just get the appropriate checklist and you can plan the outing in a matter of minutes and won’t find yourself out in a field short of charcoals. And if you do realize that having folding chairs could have improved the experience add them to you BBQ Checklist for the next time.

Of course the same applies to recruiting. Let me suggest a basic checklist that you can use when dealing with recruiting. This checklist covers only a portion of the entire process – from screen to offer. I am sure you will need to adjust the checklist to fit specifics of your process.

• Job definition

• Official Job Description
• Comp. Package – an initial offer you’ll be prepared to make
• Benefits Package

• Internal Job Description (target candidate)

• Positive Filters
• Negative Filters
• Tradeoffs
• Personality Profile
• Specific Talents
• Constraints
• Comp Package – negotiation space

• Screening Materials

• Questionnaire / Phone screen questionnaire
• Job Application
• Background Check Authorization

• Interviewing Squad

• Composition / Roles
• Define Approach

• Sourcing
• Interviewing
• Evaluation

• Get the team engaged

• Interview Questions – questions designed to

• Validate Skills
• Discover Talents
• Validate Experience
• Asses Personality
• Asses Abilities

• Tests

• Validate Skills
• Assess Abilities
• Asses Personality

• Closure

• Evaluation template
• Offer letter template
• Internal communication template

• Skills Cast. You need a person who has the ability to perform specific tasks, activities, etc. basically, deliver on the job duties. During recruitment process, in particular during screening and interviewing you will be looking for the proof/indication of an ability to perform required activities by juxtaposing Typical Duties and Responsibilities, Required Skills, Experience and Background, and Desired Skills, Experience and Background of the job description with candidate’s qualifications, skills, background, experience, and credentials.

• Talent Cast. That’s a complex and very interesting topic. The idea is rather simple – interview for specific talents, strong suits, intelligence in order to gain a proof/indication of level of performance and modus operandi or proof/indication of whether the person can develop into a perfect match for position. That is easier said than done and in many ways requires substantially higher interviewing skill. I put it in a category “nice to have”.

• Personality Cast. While rather complex, possibly even more challenging that Talent Cast it falls in category of mandatory items. Personal qualities are often equally or even more important than specific skills. It is critically important during interviewing process to make sure that behavioral patterns, personality traits, style and other personal qualities / characteristics match what is indicated in Desired Personal Qualities section of the Job Description. During the hiring process you will be looking for proof/indication of a desire to perform and ability fit in.

There are a couple more aspects to casting that are particular important during interviewing process:

• Stop Light. Interviewing is a process that might get somewhat emotional and fall out of control, especially when the interviewing team is small and hiring pressures are high. In that light is exceptionally important to define and never lose sight of Must Haves – specific requirements that can not be compromised.

• Concessions. On the other hand you sometimes can be open for rather significant sacrifices – the tradeoffs you are prepared to make to gain specific talents, skills, or abilities.

• Candidate expectations. Keep in mind that while you are in the process of evaluating potential cast of the candidate to the position s/he is evaluating the cast from their own standpoint. Make sure you provide as much clarity about what you are prepared to offer in every aspect of the position.

Of course that’s just basics; there will be more discussions about casting, probably one of the most important aspects of manager’s job.

Typically before presenting your ideas to management you need to build a Business Case and prepare the materials you will need through out the process of getting the position secured.

My approach for selling organization on a new position is to deal with it as if you would deal with selling a product or service to a client. I prefer to be over-prepared with more material in my hands than I would need in a likely situation. I use power point slides, spreadsheets, etc. All documents have a single objective illustrate that bringing the new employee is the most meaningful and responsible thing to do.

I typically start with covering the business situation and my reasons for suggestion the new (replacement) hire. One of the ways to do it is to present perspective employee’s impact on organization –

• Monetary Impact; that is probably the most important as you have to show the hire’s ROI
• Schedule Impact; typically a good add-on benefit; it should not be the main point through as schedules are typically much more flexible than budgets
• Staff Impact; there are multiple aspects of staffing that could be positively affected by hiring, e.g. staff redundancy

Even though you are not suggesting alternatives to hiring you should be prepared to talk about those. You should be able to show that you have considered them and find them less efficient (can prove that). The alternatives to hiring can include:

• Contracting
• Off-shore
• Buy versus Build

Before presenting your staff request to management you should understand your walk away scenario or best alternative to negotiated agreement (BATNA). What would you if your request is not approved? What would be organization impact?

One of the most important components of your materials is of course resource profile. It can be based on the job description, basically its summary without marketing spin. The most important elements of the profile are

• Duties and Responsibilities.
• Skills, Experience and Background.
• Compensation Package.
• Position within Org Structure.
• Personality Profile.

Negotiation with management to get position approved and secured follows a typical negotiation pattern ( will cover a lot of details pertaining to negotiations over time). At a very high level there are three main steps:

• Set the stage
• Present the Case
• Bring to Closure

Here is a potential layout of your slide presentation for discussion with the management:

Today’s Situation

• Summary of the current situation
• Business reasons for staff changes
• State your recommendation

Available Options

• Suggested Approach
  • Advantages
  • Disadvantages
  • Cost
• Official BATNA
  • Advantages
  • Disadvantages
  • Cost
• Alternative Approach
  • Advantages
  • Disadvantages
  • Cost

Recommendation

• Restate your recommendation
• Summarize the results if things go as proposed
• Ask for the approval

When you get your position OK’ed do not rest on you laurels and move on with recruitment quickly, racks / approvals / etc. have their shelf life and it’s not too long…

• act as a marketing / promotional material for the company and the position (commercial)
• educate candidate about the company and position (infomercial)
• filter out people not qualified for the position in positive manner (gatekeeper)

Sometimes job descriptions cater to different objectives or to just one of the above mentioned, that’s not exceptionally common and I won’t cover substantial changes to the structure that may be required in such case. In general a job description should have the following components:

Title – job title or role. This is exceptionally important element, as many candidates search only titles.
Introduction – an elevator pitch for the job description. Depending on the approach (largely influenced on state of the market and target candidate community) this section could be design to “grab” / engage the reader.

Company Profile – an elevator pitch for the company. An important component, its positioning and tone should be based on what company has to offer, its clout in the market place, state of the market, etc. It’s important not to overdo this section and provide references to company info (URL).

Position Challenges & Rewards – an elevator pitch for the position. That is one of the most important elements for “engaged” reader and just waste of space for those scanning job ads for general fit.

Typical Duties and Responsibilities – details of the position with a promotional spin. Deeper insight for the position that helps the candidate asses the fit for position. Very important in filtering out those who see themselves as mismatch or likely not to be interested in the position.

Required Skills, Experience and Background – the areas in which the employer is not prepared to compromise. Often the compromise is still possible but that section states an opening position.

Desired Skills, Experience and Background – the areas in which the employer is open to negotiations. Be prepared that many candidates will ignore that section, however for an “engaged” reader that could provide some invaluable insight and help them to prove the fit for the position.

Desired Personal Qualities – soft aspects of the job description, often as important or even more important than the hard criteria. Again this section is typically ignored in a wholesale manner, however it is exceptionally important in the recruitment process, especially for the interviewers.

Comp Package – often “the asking price”. This section should be treated with caution as it can prevent some well qualified candidates from applying to the position or act as a bait for all the wrong people.

Constraints – specific limitations / requirements for the position that might be considered showstoppers by potential candidate. Specifying hard constraints upfront helps a great deal in filtering out people that would not accept position as they learn them. For example if security clearance is required it should be stated in a clear and distinctive manner – not just mixed with other requirements.

Application Process – hopefully simple and concise description of application process.

To illustrate this template let me use a job description we used in a search for a QA Automation Engineer for Medem, Inc. awhile ago. While it can use a lot of improvement in many areas (e.g. it too verbose in some areas and overly brief in others) it is not bad example.

[Title]
Sr. QA Automation Engineer for Healthcare Startup in San Francisco, CA

[Introduction]
Are you looking to contribute on both a strategic and tactical level in an organization and an industry that are both poised for dramatic growth in the near term? If so, we’d like to hear from you.
We are currently looking for an intelligent, independent, talented, and experienced QA Automation Engineer to work as a senior member of our software Quality Assurance team. [ Position Challenges & Rewards] The successful candidate will work with other members of the team to ensure quality, performance and trough put benchmarks for existing and new components for Medem’s core applications and services. This is a management track position; we are very interested in hearing from those interested in hands-on management roles.

[Typical Duties and Responsibilities]

Primary Job Responsibilities:

• Design, develop and execute test cases using variety of QA automation tools including but not limited to Segue’s SilkTest.
• Design, develop and execute regression, usability, stress, database verification, security and other types of testing activities.
• Work closely with software developers, production support and product managers on the troubleshooting and verifying bugs, as well as on design of internal and external applications.
• Participate in development of internal QA tools, test harness and integrate those into development and build processes.
• Develop and maintain internal technical documentation relevant to the QA processes and procedures.

[Required Skills, Experience and Background]
Minimal Qualifications:

• Minimum of 7 years experience in Software Quality Assurance with strong emphasis on automation.
• Great command and in-depth knowledge of QA automation tools, techniques, processes, and technologies.
• Minimum of 3 – 4 years development of OO frameworks using SilkTest for web applications, or 2 – 3 years development in C++/Java and working knowledge of SilkTest design and deployment of significant extensions to the existing framework.
• Significant hands-on experience in testing web-enabled application.
• Knowledge of Relational Databases and hands-on experience with SQL and stored procedures.
• Solid understanding of full Software Development Life Cycle and QA processes.

[Desired Skills, Experience and Background]
Additional Qualifications:

• Experience with J2EE technologies, Weblogic, TomCat, JBOSS, and XML is a great plus.
• Experience with Internet security, web services, application integration is a great plus.
• LoadRunner, white box or/and unit testing experience is a plus.
• Release management and application build and push to production is a great plus.
• Application Service Provider (ASP) experience for B2C Internet applications is a great plus.

[Desired Personal Qualities]
Personality Traits:

• Strong passion for Quality Assurance and track record of continuing education.
• Detail oriented, methodical, meticulous, and process-oriented person who is prepared to instill the processes in a diverse fast changing and not process-oriented environment.
• Strong task planning and tracking capabilities; strong diagnostic, analytic, troubleshooting, problem-solving skills.
• Highly developed critical thinking and effective risk analysis skills.
• Ambitious self-starter with get-it-done attitude who strives for results and performs well under pressure.
• Small company / start up mentality with appreciation for the benefits of structure.
• Excellent interpersonal, verbal and written communication skills.

[Company Profile]

About Medem:
Medem, together with leading healthcare partners including the American Medical Association (AMA), has created the nation’s premier physician-patient communications network. Medem recently launched the iHealthRecord, the first secure, interactive online personal health record available to all Americans at no cost. The iHealthRecord has met with critical acclaim across all aspects of healthcare and has been featured nationwide in over 5000 print, radio and television media outlets since its debut on May 9th of this year. Currently, almost 100,000 physicians and their patients utilize Medem’s iHealth Services platform including the Online Consultation secure patient messaging service, innovative care management services, same day FDA warnings for patients regarding their medicines, a customizable practice Web site, and trusted and award winning clinical content from America’s leading medical societies.

Medem offers a dynamic work environment and the opportunity to build meaningful skills while working with a talented team of professionals who are dedicated to improving people’s lives through the use of our services.

Medem is an equal opportunity employer. For more information about Medem, visit the company’s Web site at http://www.medem.com.

[Comp Package]

Medem offers a highly competitive salary and benefits package.

[Application Process]

If you meet all of the above qualifications, please submit your resume with cover letter for immediate consideration to: qajobs@medem.com

• Organizations grow opening new needs and requiring new resources.
• Teams and organizations at large go through significant structural changes redefining resource requirements.
• Attrition calls for replenishment.
• Sometimes need for recruitment comes from change of focus.
• And sometimes from completely unjustified executive directions.

Many organizations look at Recruiting Process mainly as simply an interviewing process. There is of course much more to it from marketing the company to potential employees to maintaining good vibe about it even after layoffs and terminations. Simplifying that just a little bit let’s look at nine key components of the Recruiting Process:

Identifying the Need. The first step in recruiting is deceivingly simple – decide what position you need to fill in. For example one of the most common mistakes in this case is assumptions that position that just opened up is the one that needs to be filled in. Another common trap not rethinking the needs in case recruitments takes a long time. Organizations even the least dynamic constantly change, people step up to new challenges, new projects start, processes change, and so on. In addition consider these questions to ask yourself:

• Can you afford it? Do not forget the cost of the recruitment itself.
• Can you survive it? (Think about unavoidable negative short term impact on people, tasks, and processes.
• What’s the ROI? That’s more about long term impact on people, tasks, and processes.

High level position definition. You should define / outline the position at a high level right after you identified or reassessed the need. The definition of the position where you will bring the person to should include:

• Goals and Objectives (what this rack is created for, what are the long term and short terms expected accomplishments)
• Position challenges & rewards
• Typical duties and responsibilities (details of typical work assignments)
• Environment (team, location, creature comforts, business dynamics, change rate)
• Comp package and disciplinary constraints.

At this point you may want to create the job description. That topic deserves a stand alone post though. The link to it will come [here] soon. is here Job Description Basics.

Securing the rack. The fact that the position was open before doesn’t guarantee that it will stay open, the most desperate need doesn’t ensure organizational support and appropriate budgeting… You need to make sure that you have the ability to bring the new person in the organization and in particular have the finances to cover the comp. package and recruiting costs. Sometimes securing the rack is complex process that involve selling your upper management / organization on the actions you want to take. And that topic deserves a stand alone post as well. The link to it will come [here] soon.

Defining the Perfect Match. Dry language of job description is at best a guideline for what you are looking for often misread, misunderstood and randomly followed. You need to define exactly what you are looking for. That is complex topic so I will put a couple posts to cover it, one on basics of castings (the link to it will come [here] soon.) and another with a deeper dive into recruiting match-making (the link to it will come [here] soon.).

Sourcing. That is a huge topic that deserves coverage in multiple dimensions – prospecting, screening, and probably a bunch of posts on techniques. It will take me some time to cover it and the links for related topics will be included [here] soon.

Conducting the Interview. There are scores of books written on this topic alone, from position of employee and employer. I will put together some essentials the links to these posts will be included [here]… can’t say soon though.

Evaluation. Selecting a candidate could be a simple task but that doesn’t happen often. You need to approach evaluation with rigor higher than interview process. Selecting candidate means committing to an employee for potentially very long time. I will cover basics of evaluation in a post that I will link from [here].

Negotiations. Getting the candidate on board almost never goes without some kind of negotiations, and that is a topic that by itself can take over this blog. I will cover negotiations in multiple posts grouped by this [category], I will also add a post covering basics of negotiation with a candidate you are interviewing and will link it from [here].

Closure. Well, I am not going to write a post on that topic, even though it deserves one. In brief there are a number of steps you need to do after the candidate has been selected, some elements of the closure should be executed during the interview, some after the interview before hiring, and some after hiring:

When closing interview you need to

• Ask for the commitment
• Educate a person about the counter offer
• Test the commitment

After you have decided on the candidate make them an offer, it typically is done in a few steps

• Verbal Offer and Handshake
• Official Offer and acceptance
• Wait till the candidate start before officially closing the recruitment process… As Yogi Berra used to say – it’s not over till it’s over

An exceptionally important element of closure is checking references, it accomplishes a plenty of objectives such as

• Gives you a validation of your assumptions & confirmation for your conclusions
• Provides some tips for handling special situations
• Helps with role fit justification

Another item that many companies find exceptionally helpful is background check, at minimum you should consider Driving Record / Criminal check

And of course you need to deal with HR Documents such as

• Candidate’s documents
• Employment Application
• Background check authorization

Well I guess that makes a good closure for this post…

• Recruitment activities almost never stop, even during economic downturn like nowadays.
• Recruitment is never easy, even during “employer’s” market.
• Recruitment mistakes are some of the most expensive.
• Most of managers (including myself) overestimate their abilities to recruit right people.
• There is always a plenty of room for improvement in any organization’s recruitment process.

Recruiting is a key responsibility for majority of managers. In some organizations that is not the case, the managers are isolated from the recruitment process, and I feel sorry for these guys. While complex, laborious and error prone recruitment continues to be one of the best levers a manager have in building solid teams.

I will cover my views on recruitment, tips, tricks and traps in a series of posts, for now let me just cover the basics.

Recruitment is a process, akin to manufacturing of goods or other long running workflows. It has its actors, its use cases, its tools, its quality metrics, and so on. It needs to be viewed as a process and it can be optimized to deliver high quality outcomes.

Clear Goals. As with design any process you need with setting up clear goals and objectives. That may seem obvious yet it’s amazing how many times I have seen the opposite. No objectives will guarantee failure in recruiting or will make it for a very easy process – “if you do not know where you going any road is the right road”. And I can’t even start to describe how frustrating it is to interview with companies that do not know who they are looking for.

Solid Structure. The process should be structured and the structure must be communicated to all stakeholders. Solid doesn’t mean rigid –the process can be agile. It just have to be well understood workflow and coordinated actions of participants. For example you do not need to drag a candidate through 15 steps if s/he fails to pass the step one, you just need to know how to gracefully exit the situation without upsetting the candidate and creating a negative vibe about your company.

Maturity. I do not expect that level of recruitment process maturity would be the same for different organizations. Getting to a higher maturity level requires continues investment of efforts and takes time. However a great majority of the companies can make that process Repeatable & Predictable.

Metrics. You can not control what you can not measure. Like with any process metrics could play a significant role in achieving efficiency and quality outcomes. Many large organizations keep track of some basic metrics, e.g. résumé funnel counts. The key here is to understand what you’d like to measure and chances are high level figures do not offer much value. To make metrics work you need to incorporate feedback loop based on employee performance, for example hiring vs. retention ratio.

Legal Aspects. There are a few elements that set recruiting processes aside from many others. In particular its personal aspect – dealing with personnel, or just people. That puts a whole another spin a level of complexity on the process and its implementation. I will talk about it later, what I want to mention right away is the need of Staying Legal through out the process. In some way it may turn out to be more complex that it appear, in particular for when dealing with complex and sensitive laws, especially in per-employee states such as California.

As I mentioned recruitment is a manager’s responsibility, in many ways it’s also a privilege. One of important aspects of the privilege is its “side benefit” – while recruiting others we learn what to do and what not to when looking for a job, and one days these skills might come quite handy…

Communication Skills. By far the most important skills that can propel someone’s career or stop it cold. These are also skills that are not easily measured and thus not easily controlled, built, assessed. Let me clarify this point – one’s ability to lift heavy object can be easily quantified, an ability to write bug free code is a bit more difficult to measure, yet still possible. With measurable skills like that a person can easily asses whether s/he is qualified for a particular job, also s/he can invest in training and measure their progress. It is much more complex to measure skill level when it comes to communications. Many people just use mysterious “when you know – you know” approach. With complexity in measurement the problems with building / improving the skills follow. I have seen many people who invested a great deal in building their communications skills with no results. I guess one can attempt to solve this conundrum by categorizing the skills, and taking a close look at each category. That topic deserves a very serious stand alone discussion, for now let me just suggest a couple categories:

• Verbal. A set of skills that includes spoken and written word. Note that verbal skills are both outbound (delivery of the message) and inbound (receipt and comprehension). The level of outbound skills could be measured in a view of mastery of the Seven C’s of communications. Can you consistently deliver a message in Concise, Clear, Concrete, Correct, Coherent, Complete, and Cordial manner? Inbound skills are mainly about comprehending the message, retaining required part, filtering unnecessary, and creating a correct (outbound) response.

• Non-verbal. A set of skills that correspond to your ability to read non-verbal language (gestures, positions, facial expressions, etc.) and broadcast desired message non-verbally via controlled NVL. That is not an easy skill to master.

• Presentation. In my view “presentation skills” are just regular verbal and non-verbal communication skills put to work. It is well known that having skills doesn’t mean the ability to apply them properly. The good part is that with foundations in place presentation skills are easy to learn and measuring is somewhat straightforward via efficiency of presentations.

People Skills. Another set of exceptionally important skills that typically “measured” by blanket statements such as “she has great people skills” and thus difficult to develop / improve etc. The following high level categorization could be considered for better understanding / finer measures / efficient management:

• Rapport building. Critically important for sales crowd this skill is often overlooked in management world while it deserves to be on of the top. Most of the activities of a manager could be significantly constrained by luck of rapport building skills.

• Staying Connected. While establishing rapport applies to initial click between people, staying connected characterize ability to maintain the rapport through the life cycle of the relationship. An ability to stay connected typically has its roots in person’ integrity and consistency as well as desire to stay connected. The difference between making friends and keeping them given solid foundation depends in large degree on time and effort invested in the relationship.

• Judge of character. Set of skills and knowledge essential for almost every aspect of management work, in particular when it comes to casting – matching people to roles. There are many tools and techniques that a manager can learn to improve their ability to asses employees’ personality.

• Conflict Resolution. An ability to assist parties in resolving conflicts is essential component of people skills. There are plenty of techniques that can be learned an applied in conflicts of different nature and emotional intensity.

Negotiation Skills. A large / diverse set of skills applicable to one of the most common aspects of communications between people – negotiations. That is a very large topic that I will attempt to cover overtime. And just in case you think it’s not that complex let me suggest some basic categorization of specific skills essential for negotiations:

• Ability to control your own emotional state
• Planning and organizational skills – setting goals, objectives, outcomes
• Discipline – defining and staying within boundaries, limits, constraints, conditions
• Defining own Best Alternative to Negotiated Agreement (BATNA), negotiation limits, tactics, and other aspects of negotiations
• Analytical abilities, assessment of opponent’s offers, propositions, tactics, techniques, negotiation limits, BATNA, etc.
• Command of negotiating techniques – recognizing, using and countering negotiating gambits
• Defining and clear view of a Final Exit Point and a Reservation Point (RP)
• Finding and driving for a Win-Win outcome whenever is possible
• Obtaining and maintaining required authority

I am afraid that is far from exhaustive list, yet it will do for now…

Why is that? Why most of managers especially in small companies get at best “well, you know the drill” introduction to their responsibilities? I think the answer is very simple – the job of manager is so complex that if one decides to put its description in some details the result would take many pages. The high level definition could be formed just in a few sentences. It leaves a plenty of room for interpretation and so be it – the new manager will have to find a way to fill in the blanks…

So if you are one of those managers struggling with understanding what is required of you, trying to fill in the blanks take a look at the list below, it is not by any means complete and leaves a plenty of room for improvement / interpretation. I still hope you find it helpful. Here we go –

The Seven Dimensions of Management

1. Managing Tasks & Projects

• Estimate / Plan / Budget
• Organize / Control Execution / Adjust Course
• Remove Obstacles / Aggregate and distribute Knowledge

2. Managing People

• Hire / Cast / Evaluate
• Mentor / Motivate / Develop
• Discipline / Terminate

3. Managing Team

• Build
• Mentor / Motivate / Develop
• Lead

4. Managing Organization

• Communicating & Reporting Up / Lateral / Down
• Partake in Organizational Development
• Partake in forming organizational Vision / Position / Image

5. Managing Oneself

• Time Management
• Self-motivation / self-development
• Cast thyself – finding and keeping that perfect job

6. Technical / Individual Contribution

• Professional Contribution
• Professional Support and Mentorship
• Establish / Instill Processes and Procedures (e.g. SDLC)

7. Many other hats to wear / contribution expectation

• Partner / Customer / Vendor relationships
• Purchasing (e.g. HW / SW/ Services)
• Involvement in higher level or adjunct activities e.g. Marketing & Sales
• Financial planning and analysis
• Administrative and other supplementary activities

Whew, it is a long list… Well, maybe it’s not the list, maybe it’s just my paycheck is not long enough to cover it…

If you google for answers you are likely to find more-or-less clear definitions, for example Abraham Zaleznik (1977) saw leaders as inspiring visionaries, concerned about substance; while managers he views as planners who have concerns with process.

Another common answer is based on work of Warren Bennis (1989) who drew twelve distinctions between the two groups:

Managers administer, leaders innovate
Managers ask how and when, leaders ask what and why
Managers focus on systems, leaders focus on people
Managers do things right, leaders do the right things
Managers maintain, leaders develop

Managers rely on control, leaders inspire trust
Managers have a short-term perspective, leaders have a longer-term perspective
Managers accept the status-quo, leaders challenge the status-quo
Managers have an eye on the bottom line, leaders have an eye on the horizon
Managers imitate, leaders originate
Managers emulate the classic good soldier, leaders are their own person
Managers copy, leaders show originality

You may also find less precise answers, something like “workers do it, managers organize it, leaders decide what the “it” is”…

In my opinion, and that is often what you would hear in my answer to the “Are you a leader OR a manager?” question it is AND not OR. Juxtaposing “a leader” and “a manager” makes no much sense as “a manager” and “a father”. These are different aspects of my life that coexist in the same manner many other aspects of our lives and activities. I am a leader in my pet project – www.wwhow.com yet I do not manage anyone in that small company. Many times in my life I managed tasks and people without providing sufficient leadership, more often the both aspects were in place.

More so I truly believe that an organization with 100% leader at its helm is either a luxury or a recipe for a disaster.

To be a successful leader who holds a management position you need to work on both sides of the equation, and CSM is a great way to start on that path.