I took LS101R expecting a tidy answer. Which one am I? Instead, the course refused to let me choose — and that turned out to be the gift.

The third module says it plainly: management and leadership have to coexist. They aren't opposites. They're two hands doing different work at the same time.

That has shaped my last three months.

The management was already there. There's a calendar. There are students, book orders, deadlines that don't care how inspired anyone feels. If the tables don't get moved, no amount of vision saves the day.

But the course named a myth I'd quietly believed — that if the systems run, the people are fine. A team can be perfectly coordinated and still feel invisible.

So three things changed, and they were small enough to sound like nothing.

I started listening on purpose. Not while thinking about the next agenda item. The kind where you stop, and they can tell you stopped.

I said thank you out loud, and I said it specifically. Not "great job, team." Naming the actual thing the actual person did. Generic praise costs nothing and communicates nothing. Specific appreciation says: I saw you.

I gave real responsibility away. This was the hardest. Management delegates a task. Leadership hands over ownership — the decision, the judgment call, the room to do it differently than I would have. Sometimes they did it better. That's the point.

People show up differently when they're trusted. The deadlines didn't move. But my team stopped waiting to be told and started bringing me things. You can't schedule that.

The course's question is a trap, and I think it's meant to be. Do you manage or lead? Yes. Both. Constantly. The skill is knowing which one the moment in front of you is asking for.

The book order needs management. The person carrying the book order needs leadership.

I'm still learning to tell the difference in real time. But I'm asking the question now, and I wasn't before. That's most of it.

With Benevolence,
George Shannon Ferguson