Don’t Confuse Leadership with Management

One of the points I try constantly to re-enforce to my DMAI leadership team is that we need to be leaders and not managers.

Managers oversee employees using an old-fashioned, top-down approach to implementing business strategy and achieving production goals.

Leaders inspire and empower team members using educational moments, sharing information and encouraging the team to be accountable to each other.

Given that 90% of DMAI’s team members have experience in the extremely hierarchical BPO industry, it’s often the case where we find ourselves victims to thinking management and not leadership.

To be different, we need to think different. To attract and retain top talent we have to value innovation and out of the box thinking. We can’t let ourselves limit our choices and use gut feel over data-driven decision making.

We need to focus less on titles and more on job functions, we should think of the company leadership not as OM and TS and TL, but as people with names… Irene, Kams, Aren.

I know it is hard to break the culture handcuffs that limit us… but when I am called Boss and not Dan (if you have to, Sir Dan then… but not Boss)… we lose some of what makes DMAI special.   

So my challenge to DMAI, lets stop using management terms that limit us and start encouraging each other to use leadership terms that empower us.