TGIF – Are You A Leader Or A Manager (Or Both)?

As the week winds down, we wind down with some tidbits for your information, education, health, and enjoyment.

Quote of the Week: “Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.” Stephen Covey

Humor Break:

Bev: There is a little story today in the local paper about a bank supervisor who climbed a tree with a very official looking briefcase and now he won’t come down. Why do you suppose he did that?

Al: Maybe he wants to be a branch manager?

Stat of the Week: 3 ways to know if you are a manager or a leader. Author and executive Vineet Nayar offer these three ideas to distinguish between leading and managing:

1. Counting value vs Creating value
2. Circles of influence vs Circles of power
3. Leading people vs Managing work

Action Tip: To get the full gist of his trio of ideas, take two minutes to read this very short article. Get informed but remain critical. I did. I don’t see leading people/managing work as an either/or proposition.

Self-Development Corner: Here are just a few of 20+ courses being offered by Coursera next week:

Business and Management Courses: Design Thinking for Business Innovation (Nov 4, 5 weeks, University of Virginia); The Power of Markets (Nov 4, 12 weeks, University of Rochester)

Computers and Science Courses: Automata (Nov 4, 6 weeks, Stanford University); Principles of Reactive Programming (Nov 4, 7 weeks, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne – in English)

Health and Medicine: Bioinformatics Algorithms (Part 1) (Nov 4, 8 weeks, UC San Diego); Drugs and the Brain (Nov 2, 9 weeks, CalTech); Genes and the Human Condition (From Behavior to Biotechnology) (Nov 4, 6 weeks, University of Maryland); Clinical Terminology for International and U.S. Students (Nov 4, 6 weeks, University of Pittsburgh).

Happy learning.

Bill Bradley

Bill Bradley (mostly) retired after 35 years in organizational consulting, training and management development. During those years he worked internally with seven organizations and trained and consulted externally with more than 90 large and small businesses, government agencies, hospitals and schools.