If you have been lucky enough to have great bosses for your whole career, the title of this article may not make sense. But for the majority of us who’ve had every one on the spectrum, there’s a resounding yes that will be ringing through this post as you read on. For bosses, new and old, this one is especially for you.
It’s not like the difference between square and rectangles. Bosses aren’t always leaders, and leaders aren’t always bosses. The two, as many are certainly well aware, are not interchangeable. You can have great leaders at all levels, but a boss is a title. While you’d hope that every boss possesses those attributes of a great leader, that doesn’t always show through.
Here are three defining traits that stand out among baseline “bosses” and bosses who are truly leaders. See which side you see more of yourself in, and you can start making changes to better inspire your team and yourself.
A “Do As I Say” vs. “Do As I Do” Mentality
There’s nothing wrong with delegation. In fact, it’s absolutely one of the marks of a great leader. So when talking about the distinction of “do as I say” versus “do as I do,” we’re not condemning someone’s ability to command respect and give out responsibilities. It’s a matter of where that road ends: are you just handing out instructions, or are you showing your employees what it looks like to handle responsibilities?
When you possess a “do as I say” mentality, you’re giving your employees an expectation of blind acquiescence. The best bosses and leaders are the ones who earned their place at the top—that doesn’t mean that now they rest on their laurel, it means that they’re leading the charge when it comes to getting work done.
So when a “do as I say boss” hands out responsibility, they don’t believe that they’re accountable to the same standard they’re holding their employees. Instead, they believe they’re in a position to hand out tasks and then reap the rewards.
A “do as I do” boss is much different. While they expect their employees to handle tasks to the best of their abilities, they hold that expectation because they’re doing the same. They’re at the forefront of completing tasks, pleasing customers and ultimately growing the business.
While a “do as I do” boss doesn’t have to literally do the same tasks as their employees, they lead by getting their tasks done with the same attitude and efficiency that they have come to demand from everyone else.
Demanding Respect vs. Earning It
Speaking of demanding, let’s talk about a little something called r-e-s-p-e-c-t. Find out what it means to… a leader. You can force your employees to listen to you. You can institute punitive measures that force your target results, but that can only take you so far.
In reality, what you’re doing is not actually creating respect, but manufacturing a synthetic respect-like substance. It’s like going to a great restaurant, paying for pork chops and getting back little mini hot dogs—and not even the buns. It’s a far less satisfying, cheap and thinly veiled imitation of the real thing. You’ll more likely than not want your money back.
But that’s what many bosses do. It starts with the root belief that they can’t be the kind of boss that earns respect. The reality is that it’s hard work that you have to produce daily. If you’re going to earn your employees respect, you have to realise that it’s not something that can be bought, and you have to realise that it’s an uphill battle. The idea of respect is not the same as fear, and it’s certainly not the same as knowing when to shut up when the boss is around.
If your way to creating an environment of respect is to set up enough policies that you employees have to fit into a certain form around you, then all you’re doing is prolonging the disrespect until after they clock out. You’ll quickly solidify your place as the boss that’s used as an example in blog posts years down the road.
But if you’re willing to put in the time and prove yourself as a hard worker, the respect you crave, and ultimately need to be a leader, will come all on its own.
Monitoring vs. Motivating
If you’ll notice, the common denominator of all these distinctions is that the true leader wants to put in the hard work. The leader knows that you can’t just dictate, you have to exemplify the job you want to expect out of those under your command.
The same goes for instilling a sense of motivation in your employees. Beyond just encouraging their ultimate performance, a great leader can help them to come in the door with a sense of duty and excitement that is absolutely contagious. It creates the kind of autonomy that workers crave, saying: I trust you to get this job done. I don’t have to stand over your back to make sure it gets done.
Yes, you can create an overly cautious system of accountability, but when you can trust your employees to get their work done, and they actually want to do it—that’s when you know you’re really leading.
Don’t helicopter over your employees. Put in the hard work yourself, inspire them, and watch yourself transition from merely being their boss to being the leader they want to emulate.