Leadership and Management

Even when he's wrong, tell him that he's right, / You can take the blame for him day and night. ~ Rudy Stevenson

In recent reading about leaders and managers I realized they do many similar things (planning, organizing, coordinating, controlling, staffing, and motivating), but they do them from different places. 'Leader' comes from an Old English and Germanic verb 'laedan' meaning "to guide," "to cause to go with one, or lead," "to travel," "to go," and as a noun "the one in first place"; leaders stand in front of people and inspire them, causing them to go. But 'manager', from Latin 'manus' meaning 'hand', stands behind people and manipulates (same Latin root) them; a manager uses people to accomplish things, and management is the 'handling' of laborers and "the art of getting things done through people" (Mary Parker Follett). When people buy into a vision together, someone leads - when people are a resource to buy, someone manages them.

I exaggerate to make a point, of course; in reality there's a large swath of overlap just as in any female led relationship there's a large swath of overlap, and so my wife's response to my uxorious erotic truth, "I don't want an employee for a partner", wasn't very surprising. And though my honest response was I didn't want to be her employee either, at the time I had a hard time differentiating exactly why, until I thought about blame.

When mistakes happen a manager must fix the bottom line, and so a manager usually assigns blame for mistakes to an employee and (constructively) criticizes inefficiencies. But such blame assignment is a responsibility, extra work and burden, for which managers get benefits and pay recompense; my wife knew she'd be a woefully underpaid manager. Yet fortunately, I wasn't looking for a manager either, didn't want a blame assigner to stand behind me to use and manipulate me; a blame game of bottom line efficiency I think we both knew instinctively was an untenable relationship framework for our love symbols.

Moreover, my wife is, as many people, painfully aware of her shortcomings and also feared being an underqualified leader, especially if she had an employee without opinion, or creativity, or ideas, or character, for when her mistakes are compounded by my unhelpful silence, as the responsible manager, she'd only 'have herself to blame' for what was produced. But just as she didn’t understand I don’t have an employee blame shuffling mindset, she neither understood I wanted to free her to seek and obtain her passions in life and I don't mind sharing mistakes on the way.

Everyone has setbacks and obstacles while learning what they are here on earth to learn, but if we are on a journey together, if we have bought into the same vision, then as partners in something together I am always happy to voice my opinion in order to help us along as best I can, so that we journey forth together as best we can. And sometimes in order to learn value and worth she sometimes needs to make experiential mistakes, and so sometimes even though something seems a mistake to me and I may disagree with her, I follow on anyway because I want to participate in her learning too. I am not with her in order to get to the bottom line or even the finish line, I journey with her to be with her, to be a part of her journey and be a partner in her happiness. I want love and companionship with her ambitious daring and most passionate self, and I want to help her passions and life lessons to fruition, see her satisfied content and happy.

I'm sure we'll travel some places side by side and split leadership fifty-fifty, and sometimes perhaps I'll lead because I'll simply be better equipped for some stretch of road, or because she's injured, or who knows why, but mostly, because she knows where her happiness lies better than I, she'll lead our partnership as we journey together.

And as a leader, I only want her to try to make mistakes constructive (criticism) by educating and inspiring me so we become better and more intimate fellow travelers, more able willing and worthy of our journey together and of our goal, still yet partners with one in the lead position. I think we both want a partner in a journey, a dream, a vision, a partner in passion, someone we can dynamically and intimately interact with on our way somewhere together.