Covey succinctly captures a truth: Leadership and management are two different things. As with so many other things, I believe that people are most often not one thing or the other but a blend of the two. I don’t know anyone who is a pure leader, doing no management. And vice-versa.
I am a manager by title and by practice. It’s my job to help my team put “first things” first as often and as consistently as they can. In that work, however, I must also lead. I determine, for example, that having Sprint Planning every second Wednesday is a “first thing” the team must put on the top of their priority list. When Sprint Retrospectives aren’t being effective, I make it a “first thing” for the team to iterate on changes that will improve Retrospective effectiveness.
The best managers I know are also leaders in the context of their teams.
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