Leadership vs Management – The thoughts of business leaders

Great quotes from the inspiring business leader interviews at LeaderFest 2014.

Bernard Cook

• Leadership is not the same thing as management.
• You can teach management; you can’t teach leadership.
• Recruit people who share your purpose first and have the right skills second.
• I didn’t do it. I brought in a Chief Executive – She did it!

Kevin Morley

• Leadership needs focus.
• If you have a gift it’s your duty to use it.
• What drives me? I just do things. They come to me.
• Why do you do so much? I’m just not very good at saying “No”.
• The most important thing in decision making is speed.
• The best form of decision making is gut instinct.
• The only way you can hone your decision-making skills is by being in a position where you have to make decisions.
• We all need a boss who can bolster us when we feel down.
• Great leaders don’t grab the limelight.  They push it onto others.
• You have to plough your own furrow.
• Everyone at the top of the business should spend two years in sales and marketing.
• The only way to be SEEN as successful is to BE successful.
• Success is a result of focus and hard work.
• Once you are successful it’s easy to stay successful because your reputation gains you support.

Jamie Shepperd

• Even if you have a system and a process you have to treat clients as individuals
• All challenges – like in our case regulation – create opportunities – others can’t handle it and so sell out to us
• I don’t get stressed – I do what I do and I’ve recruited a good senior team who do what they do well

Craig Marshall

• Rather than trying to be impressive, you need to be able to be impressed by your team.
• Changing your mind is OK too.
• It is important to understand the difference between management and leadership. Managing is about managing complexity and achieving stability.  Leadership is about inspiring others and driving change.
• Is management or leadership more important? Both are essential. Great leadership is built upon good management. You need management first.
• Is it better to be over-managed and under-led or over-led and under-managed? The first won’t go anywhere, the latter will be chaos.
• When you add to the truth you subtract from it.

Liz Jackson

• Life should be an adventure.
• I spend most of my day at work so I want it to be interesting.
• I love selling. I love work.
• I cannot understand the joy in retiring.
• If you think you can or if you think you can’t you’re bound to be right.
• Be nice to geeks – you’ll probably end up working for one.
• Leaders are interesting and interested – they think out of the box.
• Leaders are hardworking servants.
• Leaders have a single-minded determination to make a difference and the self-belief to know they can.
• I love recessions.  They drive you to be leaner, smarter and to stand out from the competition.
• Getting better at what you do happens more in the bad times than the good.
• We close our eyes and imagine where we want to be in 1, 3 and 5 years and then we set goals.
• If you’re focused you will always be unpopular with some people.
• You don’t become successful without getting on and doing something.
• Success brings problems.
• I love to help people.
• Equal partnerships don’t work. They always end in tears.

MD2MD membership

• You meet your peer group privately for structured confidential conversations about real business challenges. You meet online for 90 minutes every 3 weeks.
• You attend one of a selection of open workshops led by top professional speakers sharing best practice on a wide range of leadership topics.
• You join our annual conference LeaderFest and our annual ‘Retreat to advance’.