Name: Why having a vision isn’t enough to be an effective leader | Suzy Welch for Big Think+
Uploaded: 2025-01-27T21:01:10.000Z
Duration: 5 min 5 s
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To-infinitive

If you're a manager or a leader and all you do is dream big dreams and think and talk about the future in lofty visionary terms and you don't actually get anything done, everyone is going to hate you.

Adverbs of frequency

And meanwhile, if you're a person who's in the trenches and all you do is sort of the logistical tactical, this is what we do tomorrow, grunty stuff, and you never go up to the mountaintop and say, here's our vision, everybody is going to hate you.

The comparative

When I teach managerial skills, I refuse to use the word manager or leader, and I've created this very unattractive word, lanager, which of course is a blend of those two words, because it's only academics who debate what leaders do versus what managers do.

And I actually believe from living in the real world of business that there's really a blend of those two jobs in real life.

And it doesn't make any difference if you're managing three people or 300,000 people, the very best people at the top of teams or organizations are doing a little bit of managing and a little bit of leading.

I'm a professor of management practice at NYU Stern School of Business.

You can't execute or you can't ask people to do what you're asking them to if you don't explain to them why you're asking them to do it.

One of my favorite lines, and I use it over and over again when I'm teaching, is you have to tell the drummer what the words of the song are about.

You can't just give the drummer the music and tell him to hit it.

He's not going to be half as good or she's not going to be half as good as if they know what the song is about so they can put their whole selves into it.

This is what managers and leaders should be doing, okay?

Telling the drummer and all the other musicians on stage what the words of the song mean, why you're doing the work.

And the job of the manager and the leader at the same time is to be going back and forth between the why and the how and the why and the how, sometimes in one conversation and certainly always in the same day.

Part of what makes you very good as a person running a team in the manager role is to be the simultaneous translator between your team and the people up there.

When I see simultaneous translators at the UN and I see them going back and forth translating a conversation between, say, the Chinese delegation and the Bulgarian delegation and you can see how exhausting this is,

I think, yeah, that's the work of a good manager.

It's more than being a messenger because when you're a messenger you sort of drop the bomb.

You know, you say, this is what they're saying up there and you just sort of keep your poker face about it.

Or you go up to the top and you say, everybody really wants to work from home two days, you know, blah, blah, blah.

And then you just sort of stand there and you act like Switzerland, you're neutral.

The really good manager, they are not just doing that.

They are explaining both groups to each other and they're taking a stand.

I mean, the worst thing in the world is a fingerprintless manager.

Leave no sign of what you really believe, okay?

You sort of agree with the last person in the room.

It may shorten your career in some places, but at least you stood on your principle and your reputation for integrity will follow you.

People hate making hard calls because when you have put your name with the decision and then it bombs, your name's on it and nobody wants to be exposed to failure because generally people want to keep their jobs.

But you have to develop this, otherwise you will get a reputation for a person who cannot be a leader.

You can't move an organization forward if you don't make decisions.

You have to decide about pricing, market segmentation, brand.

I mean, you just have to make one decision after another.

The hardest decisions, of course, are people decisions.

Who goes into what job and what they actually do.

But once you've failed a few times in business, you realize, oh, life will generally go on.

And I'll be able to say to my team, "Look, we did that once. It didn't work. I own it. This is what I've learned."

And the respect you get for saying I made that mistake, I own it, this is what we learned is unbelievable.

And I think you sort of have to do that once before you realize, oh, wow, that's actually so much more effective than actually not even being associated with the mistake.

Everybody makes mistakes and once you sort of say, I made a mistake, I really learned from it, people are like, oh, I really respect that person.

Sometimes I finish the semester teaching about managerial skills and about half the class is like, we're out.

It's very easy by comparison to be an individual contributor or to be, for instance, on a board where you're just big picture.

Okay, those two different things are quite simple compared to what a manager has to do, which is both of those things at once.

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