I believe the metaphor is accurate. I have been working in the IT industry for the last 11 years and I have worked with many managers. I have experienced mostly average managers who treat every resource equally without weighing those individuals’ strengths or weaknesses. And as a result, we see a huge attrition rate and less job satisfaction among employees. When one employee does what he or her loves doing, automatically job satisfaction goes up and the output and effectiveness of those resources increases.
Great managers are great mentors too, they recognize talents. Help employees identify strengths or weakness and help them grow. Hence the metaphor that great managers play chess Like in chess great managers recognizes that not every employee has the same strengths or not everyone enjoys doing the same things. And by recognizing individual strength and weaknesses great managers harness the optimum effectiveness from any team.
While managers manage, leaders anticipate and lead. A leader has a vision and s/he knows how to steer the team and where to go. Leaders lead regardless of the strength and weakness of employees lead. They help employees work on their weaknesses and use strengths to stride forward.
Hence I believe the metaphor in article differentiating managerial and leadership roles.
In my industry, we work on projects. Each project needs team members with certain sets of skills. And the project manager absolutely needs the same set of qualities. In the project, we often see each team member need a certain skill set to play a certain role. And the manager needs to identify the correct employee with accurate skill sets to fill those positions. When managers fail to do so, projects often fail. Moreover, we see dissatisfaction among team members are people leaving. People leave managers, not companies ( Lipman, 2015). Managers need to be good leaders too. They need to anticipate. Be a good mentor and help team members grow personally and professionally. Being a hands-off project manager might seem easy but actually, it is difficult to be a great project manager. Being a great project manager means, being straight forward, exhibiting leadership maturity, putting the right people for the job, holding one to one with team members and managing conflicts among team members ( Hedges,2014).
References –
Lipman, V (Aug 2015). People Leave Managers, Not Companies. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/victorlipman/2015/08/04/people-leave-managers-not-companies/#3e58c31c47a9
Hedges, K (May 2014). Five Things Great Managers Do Every Day. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/work-in-progress/2014/05/01/five-things-great-managers-do-every-day/#5c6091cb4109
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