Administrators who cannot let go: the super manager syndrome

Super managers manage boundaries; leaders transcend boundaries. Super managers want to ensure their success and that of their organization by getting the various units in the organization to do their jobs well. They want to get the right individuals and groups together to get the job done. Leaders, on the other hand, tend to be more concerned with team development and total quality management, which is accomplished by crossing boundaries. The tasks of a leader are viewed as getting the right people together to get a job done, which might involve bringing people from different units together. As Hirschhorn has said, Today you want a different kind of team. As you supervise large numbers of people, and as rapid changes in product lines and technologies require you to rely on the initiatives of team members, you need to authorize individuals in the team to think for themselves, come up with new ideas, try alternative approaches--in other words be nonconformists. Perhaps the most important distinction between a leader and a super manager is that a leader can see the whole forest without becoming concerned with all the varieties of trees and their interaction at different points in time.