Leadership and Management is like Riding a Bike

One common childhood memory is learning how to ride a bike. Usually, someone will demonstrate how to use the bike, and slowly, the child begins to use the bike and understand what actions need to ride. To ride on your own, it helps to put enough trust in yourself and the mechanism to ride successfully. The actual bike is unique. Even engineers and mathematicians cannot explain how they function if you push a bike with no rider. If you give it a forward shove, it will travel a certain distance that does not align with the momentum exerted before it falls over. Those who have studied this phenomenon would have thought it would lose much sooner. But the question is, why doesn’t it?

At some point, you must accept there may not be an exact reason. I am not one of those people. There is a synergy of its components that allows it to exceed expectations. When blended, this same kind of energy applies to leadership and management. They are two different things. According to Tony Robbins, leadership is the ability to inspire a team to achieve a certain goal. According to Heinz Weihrich and Harold Koontz. “Management is the process of planning, organizing, actuating, and controlling an organization’s operations to coordinate the human and material resources required for the effective and efficient achievement of objectives.” One is about inspiration, and the other is more about the parts, pieces, and how they interact.

When you think about that moment when a child pushes off the ground and places both feet on the pedals and finds them floating across the asphalt with little effort, it is the blend of having the right motivation, inspiration, and a shared goal, along with the right parts, pieces, and mechanisms. Both of them are essential to achieve forward momentum. It feels great when it happens too. As if the breeze is flowing through your hair and you are on top of the world. The new vantage point also lends perspective. You recognize you cannot do it alone, and the prideful feeling becomes your fuel to continue to move forward.