“Managers don’t … build successful companies, leaders do” (Jacob Morgan)

A very interesting blog article by Jacob Morgan. Social tools and even more important the new social behaviour facilitate the development of leaders. And if we talk about leaders, this may not be the typical managers in the company hierarchy. Actually quite often those leaders are not the managers.

Leaders aren’t created by their authority, they are created by their ability to share their sense of “why” and their knowledge, passion, and experience in a particular area. Leaders are also exceptional story tellers. Through social media and collaborative platforms employees can now share these things.

In traditional environments where employees typically don’t have a voice it is now possible to become a recognized leader among peers and coworkers. Leaders can come in all shapes and sizes and can be leaders on any topic. …

The sad thing is that many organizations are focusing on creating managers and not enough on recognizing and cultivating leaders. Every company in the world has leaders and most of these companies have no idea who they are. We have amazing people with amazing ideas sitting in our four walls but we’re too busy stuck in a legacy mentality to recognize them.

Managers don’t change the world or grow and build successful companies, leaders do.

via Who is a Leader at Your Company?.

My question is how much resistance you will have in traditional company, when these leaders show up. Not every CEO likes a leader to have more followers reading her or his blog than the messages of the CEO … Let us face it: An organization needs to have a certain culture beyond hierarchy and number crunching to allow leaders to develop and drive change within a company. And – the other way around – are we sure that a leader is always a good manager managing the “daily business”. Quite often they don’t even want to do this boring daily stuff. So do we need to find a balance of leaders and managers working in co-existence together, not against each other? This is not a natural, not an easy journey. But perhaps it is THE journey in the age of transparency, in the age of real-time communication, in the age of Social Business.

P.S. Check out Sandy Carters Blog Posting describing the attributes of Social Leadership.