It is necessary to know your men if you want to go beyond the incremental and deliver magic. The difference between a leader and a manager is stark even though books have been written to explain it as if it was a fine and indistinguishable gap.
A manger sits on a high perch and expects the men to deliver on the ground. So, they do deliver, but just the way they have been doing and maybe a bit better. A leader is out there with his team roughing it out on the ground and in the trenches, and makes them leap to heights neither they nor he himself ever thought was possible. For a leader the sum is alway more than the parts; in fact it is not a sum, but a new number altogether. A leader doesn’t do two plus two to make four; he puts them march together and makes a twenty-two. Being out there in the field doesn’t necessarily mean working on that nut and bolt. It means being able to wield the spanner and show them how it is done if the occasion arises, and in good faith.
As one grows in the organisation the size of the team assigned to him grows and a time comes, when knowing all one’s men becomes impossible. While it is true that the team directly reporting to a senior manager (I prefer leader) is still small and it is possible to know them intimately, the satisfaction of knowing all the men out there diminishes. What does a people’s man, the leader, do under such circumstances?
What does a leader do, when there are a thousand men working in the organisation or ten thousand? This is a question that has been frustrating me for years. Even as one wishes one could put one’s hand on the fellow worker’s shoulder and ask about his welfare, health and family, it is not possible as a regular behaviour. You simply can’t know all of them personally.
But, nothing prevents from letting your people know you intimately. It is the next best thing if your men look at you and see in you “their man”. If you walk among them, each one of them should bond with you even if you can’t do the same, to the same degree, in return. The biggest proof of being owned by your men is that one of them, anyone of them, can walk up to you without fear and hesitation, look into your eyes, and speak with you. The feeling is electrifying.
If your men break into a smile upon seeing you, if they think they can come to you with a problem and go back with a solution, if they meet you with sadness and go back with hope and reassurance, they will deliver magic for you.
This is not to say that a leader should shirk from taking tough decisions or being unpleasant when the occasion demands. But when one does that, people understand.
(please pardon my use of the word “men” repeatedly. There is no gender bias, just the need to let the language flow easily)
