Commitment
When times are relatively settled, when the business model is working, and marginal growth is enough to keep people happy, there's not a lot of practical difference between good management and leadership.
Good management requires elements of leadership to communicate, motivate and get people to tag along and in most cases adequate leadership is enough.
When times are uncertain however, it's different. We find ourselves in a space where what we're used to managing has blown up, and people are looking at us with expressions and questions that have a strong theme of WTF? going through them.
There's a lot of that going on right now. The current debate on school meals is a good example. People responding to a leadership issue with management speak. The facts might be right, even the logic - but without leadership, not enough people are listening. As anybody with young children knows, logic is powerless against emotion. They're not listening.
The difference between leadership and…
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