Once again allegations of mismanagement hit the papers , this time it’s the Small Business Administration in Washington, DC. As the article states, “Longtime critics of the agency said the current problem [a budget shortfall] highlighted a continuing pattern of mismanagement and poor planning at the S.B.A.

I think the gist of the article really highlights the critical leadership competency of scenario planning , the act of being able to anticipate possible futures and have in place a specific plan to handle situations that could actually occur.

I am reminded of Thanksgiving Night in 1981 when the old Northwestern National Bank Building in Minneapolis burned. What was remarkable was that the Bank was able to be open for most banking business in another location , that means having computer systems up and running and the space needed to do business, the very next morning , the Friday after Thanksgiving. This achievement did not happen by accident.

One of my neighbors at the time was the Secretary to the Board of Directors of Banco, the parent company of the bank. We usually sat together on our bus ride into downtown Minneapolis. He told me that the bank had just completed its disaster plan about a month before. The senior leadership of the bank went through the discipline of trying to anticipate what natural and man-made disasters could shut down the bank and what could the various departments do to plan for those scenarios. One of the key events that they anticipated was a catastrophic fire.

The moral of the story is that all leaders need to pay attention to learn from the past, pay attention to the present, and plan for the future.

As part of the coaching process that I follow, I try to assemble as much data as I can about my coaching client. That information includes 360 degree feedback data, style information such as the MBTI, as well as insights from interviews with bosses, board members, direct reports, and peers. Often I will also “shadow the person I am coaching to observe them in action. In the process of preparing for a new client, I had a conversation with one of the board members for the organization who shared with me his perspective on the difference between a manager and leader. According to this CEO, “the role of a manager is to get the most effective use out of the organization’s resources, and the role of a leader is to create a shared vision to help people do their best.

Now, the debate about the differences between what is a manager and what is a leader has been going on a long time and there are far too many references in this discussion to cite here. However, one of the things I have noticed is that there is an organizational belief that as one progresses up the corporate ladder through the ranks of manager, senior manager, director, and so on, there is an expectation , sometimes explicitly stated, sometimes not , that at some point a person will shift from being a manager to being a leader and do “the vision thing. Certainly, senior leaders , or more specifically, THE senior leader of an organization , need to be less involved in the minutia of running the organization and more concerned with it’s strategic direction. However, I offer several observations.

First, we mix up the terms “management and “leadership regularly in the way we talk about the people who run organizations. We typically refer to the people at the top of an organization as senior management , not senior leadership , although I am hearing the term “senior leadership team more often. Yet, when we reference them individually we often say they are the leaders of the organization , not the managers.

Second, we promote someone into management because he or she got great results as an individual contributor and we HOPE that they will be successful getting work done through others. We promote someone into a senior management position based on his/her ability to get work done through others by delivering results in a number of different assignments and then we HOPE they can think strategically and do the “vision thing.

Finally, regardless of the level of management one is in there are elements of management in that position as well as elements of leadership. Skillful and self-aware managers know the difference.

A record breaking snow fall in NM finds me hunkered down in my adobe casita in the North Valley of Albuquerque with some time to catch up on some reading and other tasks that accumulate as a result of a busy schedule. In perusing the December 8-14 issue of New Mexico Business Weekly (yes, I am that far behind), I came across an article by Jason Trenkle about Larry Waldman, the Senior Economist at The University of New Mexico’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research. While the article talked about Larry’s facility with numbers, it focused primarily on “what keeps him up at night , pondering why it is he thinks and acts the way he does. In other words Larry Waldman spends time on better understanding himself.

In my management workshops and in one-on-one sessions with managers and executives, I stress self-awareness , building a better understanding of our individual style and how it lands on others. We all have different preferences regarding what energizes us (e.g., people or ideas), as well as differences in how we perceive the world, how we make decisions, and how much structure or flexibility we need. Understanding our own preferences and how they impact others as well as appreciating and valuing the different preferences our colleagues may have is a major key to effective and satisfying workplace relationships. If only all of us would invest in Larry Waldman’s practice of self-understanding I think we would have a start at better relating to others.