Leaders vs. Managers
I’ve asked some friends to bring their insights to the Leadership Freak community. Please give a warm welcome to today’s guest writer, Lolly Daskal.
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What is the biggest difference between managers and leaders?
Both roles are important but they seek to do different things…
- Leaders lead people. Managers manage people.
- Leaders set destinations. Managers navigate the roads to get there.
- Leaders cultivate change. Managers cultivate creating stability.
- Leaders inspire. Managers comfort.
- Leaders appeals to the heart. Managers appeal to the head.
- Leaders set direction. Managers set plans with details.
- Leaders work on a system. Managers are working the system.
- Leaders have vision. Managers are about reaching goals.
- Leaders are about effectiveness. Managers are about efficiency.
- Leaders have followers. Managers have subordinates.
- Leaders take ownership. Managers take responsibility.
- Leaders shape culture. Managers enact culture.
- Leaders are proactive. Managers are reactive.
- Leaders accomplish achievements. Managers accomplish compliance.
- Leaders break rules. Managers make rules.
- Leaders use conflict. Managers avoid conflict.
- Leaders set new direction. Managers go on the existing roads.
- Leaders go inward. Managers work outward.
- Leaders are concerned what is right and managers are concerned about being right.
As you can see managers and leaders are two different people. Do organizations need both? YES.
Leadership begins where management ends and smart organizations value both and great organizations work hard to make each a part of their team.
What comparisons and contrasts do you see between managers and leaders?
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Lolly leads the “Lead From Within” movement. She travels the world speaking and coaching. Learn more about Lolly Daskal at her website: http://www.lollydaskal.com/ . Follow Lolly on twitter @LollyDaskal
Excellent and comprehensive list Ms. Daskal. Appreciate your post and with your permission will incorporate some of the thoughts at our next managers meeting. Thank you.
Al,
Thank you for your comment. It is a great list. But what needs to be stressed is that in all of us is BOTH.
We are leaders and managers depending on the circumstances. Life is not black and white. And this list is a door opener to bigger and wider discussions.
Thanks
Lolly
What an excellent list – thank you for this.
I would add to the conflict point : Managers manage conflict; leaders engage in it.
Cinnie,
Thank you for your insightful addition.
Lolly
healthy conflict that is…sans drama 😉
I agree the distinctions made. Something I’d add: Leaders catalyze leaps of improvement; managers improve things only incrementally, by tweaking existing processes and systems.
Managers get people to do things because they have to. Leaders get people to do things because they want to.
You say managers and leaders are two different people and I realize that, but for example, what do you think of situations (like small businesses) where managers often ARE leaders, for example a founder and co-founder will necessarily be managers of their own team(s).
I have been in this situation and it’s kind of hard to set “leadership goals” and managing people towards it at the same time. But I guess it’s part of the entrepreneur’s life.
Hi Gabriele,
In today’s world, organizations expect managers to lead and leaders to manage. I think it’s one of the great challenges of our day. It requires intention, training, and support.
Thanks for bringing this idea to the mix.
Cheers,
Dan
My question is how do you become both?
Mark,
You become both. By being both.
Lolly
The distinctions are a delineation of focus, task assignment, universe of influence & strategy.
The most effective are aware that situations and environments call for a combination of approaches/skills and adapt/act accordingly.
The best leaders manage; the best managers lead.
It should be self evident but still is worth stating that it would be ineffective to accept that you and those on your team are only required to be one or the other at all times.
Some egos/events may demand that roles be played out as described above…but generally reality will require more complex approaches.
Jim,
I agree with your statement. “The best leaders manage; the best managers lead.” I feel it sums up this post brilliantly.
Your comments are insightful and bring clarity to a much discussed topic.
Lolly
“Leadership begins where management ends.” The opposite is also true. Leaders are generally not good managers so they better have a good manager following up their vision to implement, organize, and shepherd it along. I appreciate the post, which is directed to leaders, but I hope we don’t get a pride that refers to managers pejoratively.
Rick I lean towards your concept of leadership. Philosophically the ORG chart in my mind needs to be more horizontal than vertical. We all, managers included at some point both lead and follow. In a very healthy organization direct reports should include “oneself.” My rule of thumb is if your learning from someone, they lead you follow and if you are teachine, you lead, and they follow. Paraphrasing, “If you tell me I may remember, if you show me I may learn, but if you involve me, I will understand.”
Hi Lolly:
Your piece draws some clear distinctions for one to ponder. But the outcome of the thinking on this subject shouldn’t be to further the divide, but to close the gap. The question is not how to distinguish leadership from management, but how to blend leadership and management appropriately.
Warren Bennis was largely credited for originally drawing the distinctions between leadership and management, and in discussion with him, he made the clear statement to me that he regretted the harsh generalizations made which created a degree of unfair stereotypes.
I think the outcome of any discussion on leadership and management should be to understand how to functionally leverage the benefits of both disciplines to individual and operational advantage. You might enjoy the following post which makes an attempt to bridge some gaps: http://www.n2growth.com/blog/leading-above-the-line
I agree, Mike. While understanding the distinction of what is going on when you are managing and leading, it is important that each person with leadership responsibility needs to understand what the situation calls for…managing or leading. While individuals closer to the front line will likely use more management skill during the day (below the line), the two are not mutually exclusive. My experience is that the best performers are taught both sets of skills, leadership AND management and when and how to utilize each. Without that firm understanding of when to use which skill, we often find ourselves on the wrong side of the line being less effective in our role.
I believe we are better served to help people understand the distinctions of leadership and management in the context of BOTH.
Best…Jim
Mike,
I think speaking about Leaders vs Managers is a very important topic and has significant importance and I could not agree more with you when you state; this is a list of distinctions and should not be a cause division…….. its about “closing the gap”
There is a synchronicity of balance that has to happen to make this work and smart companies value both and work hard to make each apart of their organization.
Lolly
Lead From Within
Am struck with the power of the choice of words…Leaders versus Managers or…Leaders and Managers. The world seems made up of lumpers and splitters, am leaning toward lumping for this one. Points well made that the leaders and managers are two circles, yet they overlap…how much and when, therein lies the rub and the expertise.
Dear Dan,
Leaders and managers are not different person. They are two parts of same coins. Same person is leader at some place and manager in different place. The basic difference between managers and leaders is that managers manage assets, leaders manage opportunity. Managers work within the boundary of limitation. These limitations are rules, regulations, policies, procedures etc. Leaders work beyond boundary. The basic difference between managers and leaders that fit into any system or setup is: Leaders are ordinary human being with extraordinary qualities. These extra ordinary qualities make them leaders. Other distinction between leaders and managers is that “Leaders create hopes and dreams and engage, inspire and align managers to achieve those hopes and dreams.
Core of leadership is heart whereas core of management is mind. Leaders have no walls but managers have four walls of building, office or infrastructure. It also means that managers need office to operate but leaders do not office to operate. Managers retire from the job, leaders do not retire from the job. The reason is simple, they create mechanism where managers work.
Lolly that is quite a comprehensive and thought-provoking list.
There is a “casual dining” restaurant chain that has several locations here in Tallahassee and their trademark thing is to yell out “Welcome to [name of restaurant]!” loudly and enthusiastically when patrons walk in the door. Most of the time I am fairly convinced that the employee means it.
But now it seems like MANY businesses in town have adapted the “welcome to [name of biz here]!” practice. And trust me, not many of them sound very convicted. You can tell they have to say it or they think the patron expects it or something.
A manager makes employees say “welcome to [blank]”; a leader helps those staff members find such joy in their work that they almost can’t help saying “welcome to [blank]!” when they see another opportunity to interact with a valued client.
And I think I just wrote the seed of a blog post of my own. Multitasking. 🙂
Paula,
Thank you for your comment. I can just imagine everyone wanting to adopt the Welcome to (name of biz ) policy.
Wouldn’t it be great if they looked at what worked and then expanded on the idea and made it authentically there own with a twist…
That is where innovation and creativity comes in… (another topic…another blog post)
I smile, because you inspired me and I inspired you.
Thanks for your wonderful comment.
Lolly
I have to agree with the sentiments of Mike Myatt and Ajay Kumar Gupta. I believe what corporate culture demands these days is a combination of both – leaders who can manage, managers with leadership skills.
I think the end of post where you talk about valuing both is the most important. Organizations and sometimes leaders don’t spend enough time understanding, valuing and assisting the role of the manager. Some leaders are not good as managers, being the person to break the rules and the person who makes the rules can be confusing to the staff. But often leaders don’t give the managers who enact thier vison the time, materials or attention they need to get the job done.
Laced in many of the comments is the idea that leadership and management are often linked in responsibility. Meaning a person may be responsible for dispensing a degree of both at work… which can be typically the case. In leadership theory it’s a shift from modern leadership to postmodern leadership theory. Hatch, Kostera, and Kozminski have a great book called “3 Faces of Leadership” where they shift into Postmodern leadership theory. The leader of today has to wear multiple faces… manager, artist, and priest. This is the ability of the leader to bring order to chaos (manager), creativity to order (artist), and stability to change (priest). This is a simplified version of their discussion.
My point is to present the idea that leadership is not linear or one faceted, but multilayerd and cyclical. The face of leadership today has strengths in maybe a specific face (as a manager or creative artist in their field), but is required to professionally function in more than once sector of leading (be creative, but manage your information and communication well). The successful leader today will learn how to build the strengths but manage the other faces in a way to still build the team and organization.
David,
I truly enjoyed reading your comment. The book, “3 Faces of Leadership” sounds like a great read.
Thank you for sharing.
Lolly
Great stuff, Lolly!
Thank you Jeff!
Lolly
Before reading all the comments to this post, my initial commentary on the leader vs. manager list was this:
Leaders move people forward or in a new direction. Managers keep people satisfied and productive where they are.
The thing about growing businesses is that both of these things are happening simulatneously, so it makes sense that both good management and good leadership are integral to the ultimate success of a business. Putting a team together with the right balance of management and leadership is the key. Leaders who recognize what managerial skills they do or do not have and then recruit, encourage and retain the kind of management to complement them…that sounds like a recipe for success. (it supports the leader looking inward idea too)
Great food for thought today!
MMF
Leaders do what is required when others are afraid to.
I like the list, which is spot on. And I don’t agree with the fact that leaders and managers need to be two distinct people.
We all need to be leaders or managers at times in our lives. We can’t be both at the same time, but we certainly need to be at times leaders, and at times managers.
Nothing is more boring than a manager that never leads and nothing is more despiriting than a leader that never manages and just speaks.
The world lacks of leadership capabilities and has too much of management capabilities (inherited from the Industrial Age). Thanks for promoting leadership in all of us. Still we need to manage, at times 🙂
Following my previous comment I just would like to add to the discussion my blog post on “management and leadership skills are complementary, not opposed”: http://thefourthrevolution.org/wordpress/archives/157
If the world were dichotomous, it would surely make roles easier to define. Unfortunately, the world is not, but is multichotomous. Most of us have these two roles and others thrust upon us. Being an executive rarely is “either or.” The genius is knowing when leading is important and when managing is critical.
Bill,
Even though I created the list, I truly believe and agree with your comments!
Thanks for sharing.
Lolly
While I agree that theoretically, there are significant differences in the roles of leaders and managers, there are, as pointed out by many of you, times when leaders have to be managers as well, and vice versa.
Often when there is a need, a time or a circumstance for leading or for managing, it doesn’t matter whether the “Hello! I’m __________” name tag we slap on someone’s lapel says, “Hello! I’m a Manager”, or “Hello! I’m a Leader”. In today’s world, unfortunately those labels have become interchangeable.
I think the comparisons and contrasts are not between managers and leaders, but, rather, between managing vs leading.
It’s not about your title, it’s what you do with it.
It’s about leading with integrity to get to a desired outcome in a way that has a positive impact on the team, the organization and your reputation.
Makes me think of the Margaret Thatcher quote posted on twitter earlier by our very own @Leadershipfreak: “Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.”
Leading is self-evident — you don’t have to tell anyone you’re doing it, because it shows.
An individual should be capable both to lead and to manage: to think proactively and influence others, as well as to get things done and dead-lines achieved. Leadership is about values, and management is routines and processes – management tasks are possibility to to relax in the middle of an uncertain day.
Still like the Peter Drucker viewpoint, summed up as this: Managers do things right. Leaders do right things. Management is operational, leadership is strategic. Sure there are a number of ways to describe management and leadership. In my view, and from experience, this definition is best.
I think it is important to make a distinction between roles and behaviors. In 1984 when Bennis made his famous statement, the concept of visionary leadership was new and he was trying to demonstrate its value. Unfortunately we have now assigned behaviors to roles, and we have devalued managers.
When we look from the perspective of behaviors, two distinct skill sets emerge, which should not be considered role specific. Leadership behaviors are oriented toward change. Management behaviors are oriented toward stabilization. Organizations need both types of behaviors because if they are imbalanced for too long, they become either destabilized or rigid.
Mike, Thanks for the link to your excellent blog (and video) on this topic. This subject has troubled me for quite awhile and I have been working on a blog titled “Stop Trashing Managers.” You have already done the job quite well. Thank you!
Jesse, Thanks for adding your voice to this excellent conversation.
My top value is the conversation. I love the conversation this post inspired. Sure, there was a bit of controversy but I enjoy that too. Not because I love controversy or because controversy creates traffic but because controversy fires conversations and makes us think.
Your comment is a perfect example of what I absolutely love about blogging.
Thank you! Dan
Guess I would add a caution about management behavior is oriented toward stabilization. The word stabilization sticks uncomfortably with me. Perhaps standardization would fit better? Stabilization may bring a false sense of security and a false hope. Because change is constant, is anything really stabilized? And if it is too stable then it becomes static and not far behind is stagnant.
Hi Doc, You raise a great question about whether anything is ever really stabilized. I agree with you. It’s a constant dance. Organizations that experience too much change over an extended period of time can lose to their ability to execute effectively. And on the flip side of the equation, organizations that spend too much time at the other end of the pole indeed become stagnant. Thanks also for letting me know that the word “stability” doesn’t resonate with you. I’m open to using another word to describe it.
You bet and it definitely is an improv dance! It’s that dynamic tension piece, held too long and ‘we’ snap, not held long enough and we lapse into complacency. Hmm, still going with some of the dance/music metaphor, the ride that brought us to the dance, may not (should not?) be the ride we go home in? Often businesses stick far too long with what had been successful initially and can’t see that the music (market) has moved on. (MySpace v. Facebook v. ?)
Thanks for a great list!
People tend to confuse the two roles. And in many small businesses, the lone entrepreneurs try to be both. This creates a conflict of being a visionary vs executive, and not getting things done properly.
4 days late to the party, great great list Lolly! My first read, thought, well no need to comment, she nailed it. With time and perspective and certainly some insightful comments, might add a little.
That transition point of manager to leader is a sketchy one, tettering on the edge of chaos at times, tap dancing in a mine field works too. New leaders are leaders because they managed well and may perceive they need to just use the skill set that brought them to the table…not so. Whole new set is needed, meanwhile crisis de jour places ‘manager-like’ mines in the way. “Yeah, but my comfort zone is managing, it’s what I’ve always done…”
Leaders know you have to drain the swamp and managers deal with the gators. Gotta get rid of the gators, to do that gotta drain the swamp, but the gators, the gators! And, oh, by the way, once you start draining the swamp, the gators get ticked off and oh,no, there are some ugly tree stumps in your way that you didn’t know were there, but now that the water level is down, it has become very apparent you have other deep rooted problems too…and makes it harder to run from the gators.
Leaders need to maintain vision on improving, ‘see’ and leave the implementation of the vision to managers and the staff, those who know best how to ‘do’–that overlap is the challenge. And having come from doing, we do what we know, leaders have to let go of that piece.
#16 may need a reframe. Leaders use conflict, managers avoid conflict (would posit that bad managers avoid it). Dan has several posts on facile application of conflict, good stuff there. How bout leaders endorse (maybe engage or model) healthy conflict, managers reframe, realign, and apply conflict outcomes. Still too wordy.
Thanks all for the great comments!
I noticed this notion of being a manager first in order to be a leader in several of the comments. I’m not sure I totally agree with that. Must a leader be competent? Yes. Must s/he be experienced? Maybe. Visionary? Yes.
Even good managers are not necessarily leaders. Often times a technical expert becomes a manager because they may be good at managing projects and processes.
However, leadership is something that even those not in management roles will contribute. Consider that an entry level team member might contribute ideas and improvements right away. Only enlightened organizations/managers/leaders will allow this to happen, but that is what we all strive to create. Flat hierarchies that even the most junior of team members gets to contribute to the greater good.
Its a real great collection of thoughts.
I think you cannot really differentiate and put the two labels in water tight compartments cause every situation shall bring out either the manager or a leader in an individual. We all know that no person can be a leader if he is not a manager.
A leader is someone who people look up to for every emotional or intellectual problem with a question “why & how” thrown at them, whereas a manager is a person to whom people look up to for ready made solutions without being questioned. So when the individual in a leadership role asks a question which forces you to use your intellect and lets you take a risk giving you options & no decisions is a leader because he wants you to learn & is genuinely interested in your development. Whereas the same individual plays the role of a manager when he gives you a decision because he is worried about his time lines and the bottom line.
So one has to be a leader from within and should walk the talk and he / she shall be noticed by both those up the ladder & below too. Leadership is as hard to describe as beauty so each one could find different leadership traits appealing and may over look the managerial skills which have made him a leader.
Best thing for a Leader is to be managed by someone that was a leader too, so they reduce the gap and you only find big differences when comparing leaders with directors/VPs instead. That is my case and I have don’t ‘suffer’ from many of the bullets described above. However, I know that I’m just lucky 🙂
The original list didn’t resonate with me until I was able to take in some of the follow-up comments. With those I support, I often discuss the difference between “managers” who focus on the responsibilities that lie directly in front of them and “leaders” who understand their impact on the larger purpose of the organization. This is usually around their approach to ‘initiatives’ rather than ‘results.’ Within my context, I find there are distinct differences between those who manage and those who lead.
I liked it this post so much, I wrote a little piece and augmented a couple of the points myself http://jdwalley.wordpress.com/2011/12/21/19-differences-between-leaders-and-managers/
Of course, mine is more experiential and less research, but 25 years of work experience is sort of like a long-term research project.
Cheers!
Interesting take. Being a leader is certainly different from just being a manager.
Reblogged this on lewandog and commented:
The following is from 1 of the blogs that I read on a regular basis, Leadership Freak. Simply put, this is 1 of the best descriptions I have run across related to leadership due to the fact that it articulates how a true leader may think or act differently than others. Can you spot the leaders around you??