Are all managers leaders? Are all leaders managers? It sounds like one of those brain quiz questions, but it’s a serious question that deserves consideration. Many of us assume that leadership and management are the same thing, when they aren’t at all. There are a number of differences between management and leadership, but some people are both managers and leaders.
Management is generally more formalized, and managers almost always have subordinates by definition. Because it’s formalized and tends to exist in institutions and corporations, it also tends to be very structured and authoritarian. In these situations, the manager has power and the subordinates do not. Subordinates simply follow orders in order to collect their paychecks, and in exchange for being held responsible for their subordinates’ mistakes, managers collect proportionately larger paychecks. It’s often impersonal and very work-oriented, since they want to minimize the chance they will get in trouble due to the actions of a subordinate.
Leadership is not always formalized, and not all leaders have subordinates (though some are managers, and thus do). It’s less authoritarian, and more focused around convincing people to follow you, rather than forcing them. In order to change their minds, you have to change their hearts, and leaders will inspire their followers to stick with them for the long-term. It’s less about work and more about appealing to people personally, taking credit only when it’s due and passing along credit to those who deserve it. Also, leaders take the blame when it’s their fault, rather than passing it on to someone else. They can be just as work-oriented, but in a different way; the leader wants to inspire their followers.
You can probably think of examples of each type of person from your own life. Another way in which they vary is significant enough to warrant special mention: their attitudes towards change. Leaders generally try to inspire and work towards change, while managers try to resist it. Management is about maintaining stability, but leadership is about challenging the status quo and finding newer, better, more efficient ways of doing things.
The question of which works better has to be answered by every individual organization. The “traditional” way of motivating employees has nearly always been to focus on management, not leadership. This may be changing, however. The new generation of employees generally doesn’t like to be managed in an authoritarian style, and prefers to be managed by a good leader. As time goes on, this attitude may begin to prevail among the generally older members of organizations’ management.
Long-term vs short-term goals have to be taken into account. Management seems better to meet short-range goals, since it’s a work-focused, goal-oriented strategy, but in reality, leadership will often beat out management. This is because leadership attains similar ends through the hearts of people, rather than through their wallets, and often finds improved methods along the way.
Leadership and management are two overlapping, but distinct concepts. Be sure to clarify which of the two you mean when talking about it from now on!
Tags: Leadership, Management