Change Leaders vs. Change Managers 4.5.21

This week I read Raymond Caldwell’s 2003 article about the different, or more aptly, the complimentary attributes of Change Leaders vs. Change Managers...

To oversimplify, the former set the vision, the latter put it into action through empowerment and real-world, day-to-day agenda-setting. These Managers are the mid-level leaders I wrote about previously in my mental complexity blog! This increasingly complex, flat, fast, flexible world requires more of managers - a set of soft-skills - that create capacity to sustain change.

Far too often, mid-level managers (titles: Manager, Sr. Manager, Director, Sr. Director, VP, etc.) soar to their current position through "hard" skills and subject matter expertise, their tenacity, ability to buckle down and get stuff down. They are then promoted to this new mid-level manager role, and not given the training or opportunity to develop the necessary "soft" skills to work through and lead others, and often implement/realize change or transformation agendas set forth by senior leaders.

Here emerges the necessity of coaching to support so-called “soft-skills” development.

1. Where coaching was once reserved for the top, how can coaching be deployed at scale, to reach down into the mid layers of the organization?

2. Or can the principles/tools of one-on-one coaching be leveraged through technology in a self-directed manner for real, reflective personal change?

3. Can companies be forward-looking enough to realize that early-level leaders need "soft" skill development in order to deploy them more powerfully as as they rise through the ranks ?

While finding a career coach can be a powerful tool in helping to develop these competencies in new leaders, I hope organizations can deploy this type of support earlier and more broadly for their people.