run hard, or go home
run hard, or go home

The Leader, The Caretaker, The Counselor

I have long been a huge fan of Patrick Lencioni’s book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.

Five Dysfunctions of a Team
Five Dysfunctions of a Team

I highly recommend reading it at work and more importantly, seeking executive sponsorship to read it as a group and discuss how it’s teachings can be incorporated into your own organization.

The message of the book is to be accountable and have enough trust in your business relationships that you can get in each other’s face about the quality of your deliverables.

Like any good book, it gets referenced a lot and I was recently thinking about Leadership versus Management. There is a huge gap between the two subjects and one does not presume the other.

As I see it, there are 3 principal roles that we need on a daily basis in some form or another: the Leader, the Caretaker, and the Counselor.

The Leader, we always need someone with strong opinions and the command presence to carry them out.   The Leader inspires us to action while setting the tone, tenor, and direction for us all.

The Caretaker, parent-like this person provides us with things that we need in a very basic sense and gives us the tools that we need at an operational level to do our daily activities.  This is very much the role of a manager or boss.  They provide us the framework with which to do our job.  They may. . . or may not have leadership abilities.

The Counselor advises, guides, and comforts us.  This role is a supportive role and takes the form of friends, family, and professionals from a variety of sectors each playing a valuable role.  The Caretaker enables the individual to explore and understand themselves both personally and professionally.

Look around you, do you see these people in your own life?

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