Strong Ground: The Lessons of Daring Leadership, the Tenacity of Paradox, and the Wisdom of the Human Spirit

In this chapter, Brown engages in a dialogue with Ginny Clarke, an executive recruiting expert with 35 years of experience in talent management and financial services. Clarke previously worked as a partner at Spencer Stuart and served as director of executive recruiting at Google. The conversation challenges Brown’s initial hypothesis that organizations should favor leaders over managers, ultimately revealing why both roles remain essential even in workplaces characterized by high levels of integrity and self-awareness.

Clarke begins by establishing clear definitional boundaries between the two roles. For her, managing involves controlling processes, organizing activities, and coordinating resources to achieve specific goals through planning, delegation, and problem-solving. Leading, in contrast, involves guiding and influencing others toward a common vision through inspiration, motivation, empathy, and risk-taking. Clarke identifies four overlapping skills between the two roles: communication, decision-making, interpersonal abilities, and adaptability. This framework builds on decades of organizational behavior research that explores the distinction between transactional (managerial) and transformational (leadership) approaches, though Clarke’s model offers a more integrated view that values both equally rather than positioning leadership as inherently superior.

Clarke challenges widespread assumptions about organizational structure by arguing that even in ideal workplaces populated by individuals with exceptional self-awareness, metacognition, integrity, and communication skills, both managers and leaders would still be necessary.