Business SMART:

Leadership vs. Management
 

By: Dennis A. Conforto
A-Z Media Group

With effective leadership, the brightest and most creative scrapbooking teams will prosper. An excellent leader shows a unique passion for their work, going above and beyond the duties of their position within a company or an industry. A leader is decisive and takes a proactive approach to solving problems facing either the business or the industry. A leader provides the vision and direction necessary to lead a team toward success. What transforms a person into more than an owner, an employee or even a manager, and into a leader?

Leaders see those in a company not just as employees, but as individual people that form a family. A leader emphasizes the importance of having core values in the workplace and within ones individual life. Moreover, a leader seeks to foster their own skills in other employees so that they too may one day lead others toward success. Leaders are learning engines not only for their own company but for an industry. They are interested in always learning and teaching others along the way. Getting to the top of a mountain is not just about them but about the team. For them it’s a group photo at the top not a personal portrait. Leaders are always reaching down and pulling people up to the top of the mountain.

Why is leadership necessary? Without effective leadership, teams often experience a breakdown in direction, communication and motivation, which usually leads to failure either within a company or within an industry. This is why so many great leaders have been excellent communicators. A competent leader is never satisfied with the status-quo, but repeatedly seeks to re-evaluate team goals and performance with a long-term vision in mind. Without this element of creative passion, a company or an industry often finds itself surpassed by its competitors or other industries.

One should not confuse “leadership” with “management”; an impressive title does not create a leader. A person of any position in a company may embody leadership qualities.

Nothing can replace the significance of leadership in the workplace. A company with the best ideas and potential that lacks effective leadership will eventually falter and then fail.

Author and leadership expert Warren Bennis puts it bluntly: “A business short of capital can borrow money and one with a poor location can move. But a business short on leadership has no chance for survival”.

Leaders are the kind of people you aspire to be like. They are the kind of people you love to listen to and whose opinions you seek, want and desire. While they are busy, they always seem to slow down just enough for you and your needs before they somehow change the laws of time and speed off to the next goal they have created for themselves and those they work with.

Leaders avoid words like, “I can’t do that” or “It can’t be done”. The word “no” doesn’t mean no to them it simply means “not yet”. A leader’s passion is addicting. They don’t just talk their passion about scrapbooking, they live it, they breath it, they talk the talk then walk the walk.

Leaders base their opinions and thoughts not just on feelings but on facts. However, they are not afraid to use limited facts and their vast experience to feel their way to a new truth. Leaders don’t dictate they motivate. They seek input from others either by asking or by reading and studying.

Leaders do not look at failure as failure; they look at not trying as the biggest failure in life. Leaders are not afraid to say sorry, or admit a mistake. They are not afraid of what others might say about them; they are more fearful of what they have to say about themselves.

Finally, leaders love to give credit to others. They understand that great leaders are made by having and creating great open-minded followers. When a leader moves on they are remembered beyond the span of their own lives. They are remembered for generations because in their own way they change the world and the lives of those who follow after them.

The success of the scrapbooking industry will be all about great leaders who know that the act of scrapbooking in its own way cannot only change the history of a family or a nation but in truth can change the world for good. Through the act of scrapbooking we prove that every life has value and every life is a life worth remembering. That is why the scrapbooking industry needs real leaders who know the true meaning of leadership.