"Corporate America WANTS to manage its leaders, not all managers are leaders, and not all leaders are managers. It's shooting yourself in the foot" I disagree immensely with that this is shooting yourself in the foot--quite the opposite, not doing so is shooting yourself in the foot. This is a hard concept to show without pictures, so bear with me. For the sake of arguement, please allow me that a person in a position of authority has multiple different duties throughout a work month and that successfully carrying them out requires the application of different skills. So I have to be good at delegating so I can have the accountants do there job in the beginnning of the week but I have to be analytical when I go through my check of their work. I also have to be able to establish the parameters in which I will let them "play" with the numbers--no cooking the books on my watch. I have to inspire my program development people to think out side the box, but I can't do that for them--I have to sel-lead to stay up with the latest developments in my area of influence and I have to promote my peoples work and stand up for them etc-- what am I doing over that time? My specific point is that labeling of a "leader" or "manager" is not an accurate description of what people are doing--especially wrt leading.
so, back to the basic point--Corporate America does not manage its leaders--Tracy says:
"Often times the best leaders are restricted, and unable to lead in the best way, due to policy and other stupid things. Companies have to set up safety nets for when a crappy wannabe leader tries to do something stupid and makes a HUGE, VERY COSTLY mistake. But those safety nets are holding back the REAL leaders. Corporate America has difficulty DISCERNING which leaders can be trusted and which ones can't. And so they have to be careful" which is exactly correct and is the primary symptom of not being able to manage leaders---particularly "restricted, and unable to lead in the best way". If you are a good manager of leaders you understand a few things--that they are at their strongest and most efficient when they are leading, thus you want to put them in those situations
--that they are going to make decisions thus you have to give them clear unambiguos parameters within which to make those decisions (we will not break the law)
--that they will become frustrated in a constrained environment thus you must educate them on the organizations goals and long term strategy
While you are managing your leaders, you have to continue to lead them where appropriate and to lead yourself always--so, unfortunetly my clearest example is military--
Who led the invasion of Normandy? It wasn't Eisnehower sitting in England. It wasn't General Ridgeway who jumped in with 101st--the invasion was led by a few thousand young Captains and Master Sergeant because it had to be led by them. Now, what Eisenhower did do was a masteerful job of managing those leaders subordinant to him--he supplied them he made sure they had training oppurtunity and he gave them the parameters (plan) in which to succedd and then he set them loose. IMHO, the ability to understand that dynamic and to work with it, is, as evidenced by the restriction blindly placed on leaders, the major problem in corporate America.