What is your boss a Leader or a Manager? It is very hard to differentiate who is manager/Leader, even recruiters fail to identify and end up in recruiting a manager for a Leadership position responsible for business growth, normally recruiters recruit somebody who has decades of managerial experience for a Leadership position.
We see executive search committees only for CXO positions, who search for the true Leaders, these committees take months of time and put lot of efforts in identifying the suitable Leaders for CXO positions, but there are many other positions in IT industry with equal importance where they require Leaders not Managers, these positions are normally filled up by Managers with 20+ years IT managerial experience considering them as Leaders. So what is the mistake here?
There is no mistake considering a manager for a leadership position, if that position does not demand business growth in terms of $, generating business Leads, and new business Opportunities!!!
There are two kinds of people in this world; LEADERS, who dreams and dares to perform, expands in all directions, take risks and responsible for win/loss; and MANAGERS, who also dreams but never dares to perform and wishes for everything to fall in line for them.
There was a time in Indian IT industry where it required many managers to manage people and projects to deliver the Offshore work items to Onsite, that era is gone now, but those managers are still there,what do you think those managers are now? Leaders?
Now the entire world is competing together to innovate new solutions/products for the growing new businesses, in this situation the Indian IT industry requires LEADERS not the MANAGERS.
Those Managers who has managerial experience in managing a project or group of people are now stepping in to LEADER ship positions in Indian IT industry, this is very dangerous, these people are really experienced and calculated but never take risk because of lacking of WILL and since they are not inherent Leaders.
These managers pretend to do everything and anything but never do a single thing, manage and blame others for not turning out well in every opportunity.
People of this kind will never try to do right things, or let others do, they always use some big English Jargon's. These Leaders (Manager turned Leader) look for pit holes in the Organization, processes, Inter departmental communication gaps, and individual's emotions and builds a political shield around them to protect from the repercussions of their political game.
If that person is your boss, he will jeopardize your career and makes you part of his political game play, just look for these symptoms in your boss to identify whether he is inherent MANAGER or LEADER.
- Does lots of planning and strategy
- Does not lead from front, manages from back
- Deals with aftermath problems, not proactive
- Warns politics of people around
- Puts lots of checks for every step
- Demands everything shall be known/routed
- Blames others for their mistakes
- Makes general statements not specific
Usually these Leaders (Manager turned Leader) follow above techniques to mitigate the risk of not being INHERENT LEADER, this doesn't matter if your group is just meant for delivering some piece of code to client, but it does matter if your group and your boss are responsible for growing a business.
Managers can’t be Business Leaders, but sadly in “Hierarchical lead Indian IT industry” everybody with 20+ years experience thinks that they are Leaders and can take up any challenge, in turn these people burn BU’s and growth opportunities of that business, and always end up in political warfare with peer.
These Managers does lot of strategy, planning, and builds a political protection layer around them with the help of like minded people in the organization. This is a perilous trend growing in the “30+ years old Indian IT industry”, and sadly there is no mechanism to identify it.
