Managers v Leaders

We often promote our staff to management positions but how often do we consider their leadership abilities within the job specification? Though often seen as part and parcel of the same role, leadership and management require very different aptitudes.

You might say that leaders lead people while managers manage things. Leaders have a vision for the future and are constantly challenging the system to improve. Managers on the other hand make the system work. Stephen Covey says that “management is problem-orientated and leadership is opportunity-orientated.”

Many roles require both an ability to lead and an ability to manage. Others may require mostly leadership or mostly management skills. Either way, one without the other is doomed to failure.

A leader without management skills, or a manager to support them, is unable to bring about the changes they envision. They deal with the big picture and not the details.

Whereas a manager without leadership skills, or a leader to lead them, can at best keep it all ticking over.

When are you required to lead and when are you required to manage? Imagine that there is a major change around the corner. At such a time your team needs a leader to inspire them with the vision of what this change will do for them and for the company.

This inspiration will need to be supported by management of how the change will come about. As a manager you need to make sure that everyone knows what is expected of them, how it will be measured and what results they might expect. This supports the inspiration offered by removing many of the insecurities about change that we all have.

Or suppose the company is facing troubles. The team needs leadership to re-establish the vision and inspire them. The leadership position must be to protect the team as much as is possible, allowing them to get on with sorting out the problems.

Management is needed to identify the exact problem, prepare a plan to deal with it and assign tasks. Clearly leadership without management will not solve the problem. But management without leadership may lead to low morale among the team members.

Without management, even the most inspirational leadership cannot create sustainable change. On the other hand, without leadership, the best that management can do is maintain the status quo.

We offer an array of leadership tool, techniques and training helping your leaders lead and providing management with leadership skills; in order that they can take, people to where they ought to go but do not necessarily want to go.