Growing from Manager to Leader: Observations and Lessons

by George Carner, USAID Mission Director

Inspired by Prudence Bushnell’s article “From Managing to Leading” I would like to share the lessons that served me best as a USAID Mission Director over a 35-year foreign service career.

I found that moving from management to leadership was a fluid transition. Before assuming senior management roles, I had served as a management intern, a program manager, and a long-range planner.

Working for able leaders, I saw the power of setting inspiring goals combined with following practical strategies around which teams could excel.

Applying these lessons helped me become more strategic as a manager.

Using program and project evaluations and periodic results monitoring furthered this development.

In-service management training and reading about leadership also contributed to my professional growth.  As I responded to the leadership challenges, I used some of the same tools to inspire my teams to perform at their peak.

Once my teams were performing driven by their own commitment to mission goals and targets, I was able to look increasingly outward beyond the organization to build external partnerships and support change coalitions. This enhanced my influence.

I also turned more of my attention to thinking about where the organization and our program ought to be a year or two out. The following lessons are drawn from this professional experience and growth.

Lessons as a Manager

• Do things right, i.e. efficiently, on time and on budget.
• Set clear goals and timelines.
• Delineate responsibilities and delegate.
• Set high performance expectations, while being fair and honest with staff.
• Manage for results, informed by sound metrics and good data.
• Allocate one’s own time and priorities smartly, including setting time aside to think, plan and accomplish your personal work.
• Walk or travel around to get first-hand knowledge of operations and people.
• Shape and focus agendas and run effective meetings.

Lessons as a Leader

• Formulate and communicate an inspiring vision that your team helps shape and shares. To inspire, the vision needs to be meaningful and offer improvements if not outright change.
• Devise a clear strategy or game plan to achieve the vision based on explicit objectives and targets defined with team participation.
• Assure that your organization is fit for purpose in terms of the vision and the strategy. If not, re-orient the structure, staff, and resources, as needed.
• Manage change and sustain reforms, in synch with observed impacts and experience. (A good read in this regard is SWITCH: How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Chip Heath.)
• Lead by example, along with a smile, a kind word, and acknowledgment of the individual at all levels of your organization.
• Solve problems and make sound, clear decisions, assuring the team understands your logic even if not all agree with the decision.
• Credit and celebrate others’ contributions to achieving agreed goals and targets.
• Forge external partnerships to achieved shared strategic goals.
• Be tactful but direct in your relationships. Build trust.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

I have invited people I know and admire to contribute articles about their experiences with leadership. George Carner and I met in Guatemala. As ambassador I had the diplomatic clout; as head of an ambitious development agenda, he had the resources. Together with talented  Guatemalan/American teams, we helped turn the ideals of the Peace Accords into reality

This article is a part of the Marketplace of Leadership Stories series.

Discussion Questions

1. What differences do you see between lessons as a manager and as a leader?
2. How does your work culture enable you to practice management? Leadership?
3. In what areas do you need to develop your skills and knowledge? What are you going to do about it?