Can I be a Bid Leader as well as a Bid Manager? Hint: you can – and you’re already doing it in how you write every bid

And whilst there are clear differences between management and leadership, people can demonstrate both qualities – in fact, to grow successfully in your career, both are ideally required.

So, what are the differences?

It’s perhaps more easily explained by giving an outline of how each is described.

Management is more usually described as being about making sure the team, and the processes and systems involved in the team delivering are working effectively and efficiently. A good manager is organised, makes sure tasks are completed on time, and to the required quality. They’ll coordinate activities and people to complete projects, and ensure the team has the resources they need, are trained, happy and have the skills they need to succeed. A management role is usually clearly defined in an organisation’s hierarchy (your job is more likely to have the title manager than leader), with people reporting to them, or specific tasks allocated for them to ensure are completed as set out by their own manager.

Leadership is less defined by a specific role. In fact, you can demonstrate leadership qualities whether you’re a manager or not. Leadership is about having and communicating a vision for the future. It’s about change and transformation, and inspiring people to want to aspire to achieving that future vision, make changes, innovate and potentially take risks to get there. Leaders tend to ask why, managers ask how.

 People report to managers, they follow leaders.

So, what’s this got to do with how I write bids?

As we hinted in the title, you’re already demonstrating both management and leadership qualities in how you write bids (or at least you should be).

You’re demonstrating good management techniques when you focus on answering the question that’s been asked by the customer, keeping to word-count, ensuring you’re compliant with the specification and other customer requirements. The same applies in editing to focus on efficiently and effectively getting your organisation’s benefits into your answers, and of course submitting the bid on time!

But when your writing gives the customer a vision of what life will be like for them when they’ve chosen your offering. When you’re showing them how you’ll meet their underlying needs (which might not be in the specification). And telling, through your win themes in the bid, a compelling story of how they’ll benefit from your product, service or solution, and inspiring them to choose your offering – well, then you’re demonstrating leadership qualities.

A great bid needs to combine both management and leadership qualities in the right balance.

 If you don’t have good management in your bid, you might be non-compliant, not answer the question fully (and have your bid marked down or even disqualified by the evaluators), miss key requirements in your answers or perhaps even your PQQ/RFI elements.

But if your bid doesn’t also include the leadership elements, it might be compliant, worthy even. But it’s not going to inspire your customer, and will probably get good, but not the highest, (i.e.winning) score.

And understanding this from your bidding can help you understand how you can (and need to) combine both management and leadership in your role as a manager of a bid team or function if you’re going to be successful.

Good management will help you organise the team and your bid processes to deliver your bids on time, efficiently, with high quality. It will, done well, deliver continuous improvement, and a capable team who are satisfied with their work and are developing their skills. Good management is essential to your success.

But adding good leadership will help inspire your team, give them a vision of how the team and your bids can be the best in the market and the motivation and engagement to want to achieve that vision. It will help you innovate, and transform even a competent, satisfied team into a powerhouse that’s striving to be the very best they can possibly be, and in turn deliver the very best bids and results you can think of.

You can be both a great manager, and a great leader. You’re already demonstrating those skills in your bids. All you need to do is translate that into how you’re working with your team (and beyond your team) every day.
 
This article is expanded from just one of the sections in the module ‘Bid Manager, Bid Leader, Can you be Both?’ from our Management and Leadership Skills for Bidders online course.