Why managers need leadership and leaders need management in indivisible, mutual partnership

I am a big fan of Robert Heller and Edward de Bono - two management, strategy and leadership "wonks". The following article is thought provoking. My comments are in Yellow.

From Robert Heller: The Leading Manager
The sovereign truth about leadership and management is that the key to success lies in choice [and the ability to play to your natural strengths]. Choose an an activity which is not the most apt for your talents - innate or acquired - and you will fail, either relatively or absolutely. By the same token, so will all those unfortunates who work under your leadership. For that is where leadership and management join hands. Both depend on the ability to persuade others to deploy their own talents and know-how to achieve the goals of the organisation. Good managers have long known that failure, properly studied and exploited, can lead to exceptional success. Indeed, trial and error - one of the major engines of progress - very obviously embodies failure, as a possibility and an experience. But that perception is hard to build into a systematic, scientific programme that can be taught and replicated. Defects of personality mean that leader/managers often find human relations extremely difficult to manage. Nothing is more basic to effective leadership than the ability to relate tellingly to others, from one's close colleagues to the most distant new employee. [I wholeheartedly agree - communication and dialog, (scheduled or informal) is so important. When teams are virtual and separated by timezones and cultures, it becomes even more so.] Yet I've dealt with leaders who fail the most elementary human tests - like one individual who told me that he didn't know how to say thank you, that most useful of all verbal pairings. But he was still a great success. Had he been a better communicator and man manager, though, he might well have been more successful still.

The great leader needs to judge his or her performance more rigorously than anybody else. Try the following eight questions on yourself:
* Leadership: do I lead effectively myself and enable others to lead just as effectively in their spheres?
* Challenge: do I continuously scan myself, my colleagues and the organisation to identify and exploit areas of significant potential improvement?
* Decisiveness: do issues get identified speedily and resolved as fast as possible and with due diligence?
* Actions: do decisions get converted into deeds and feedback with no undue delay?
* Communication: does everybody know what I am doing and why - and do I know the same about them?
* Change: have I created a climate in which everybody welcomes change and knows how to implement it?
* Basics: have I identified the key success factors and do I know for certain that they are working well?
* Objectives: have we formed high and potentially rewarding ambitions that govern all our work?
* Credibility: do I have the credibility by leading from the front and setting an example that others value and want to emulate?

Never forget that nothing stands still. The revision of strategy and tactics is a most powerful tool for positive change. At the same time, its neglect spells disastrous performance; whether you call it bad management or bad leadership hardly matters.