Do You Know the Difference Between Leadership and Management?
I recently had the honor of being asked to provide my perspective on the difference between leadership and management as a contributor to a great document called Lead(or) Manage. The architect of this work is David Burkus over at LeaderLab.
Here’s my contribution to that great work (my entry is on page 14 of the PDF) but you HAVE TO go read the rest of it – the perspectives therein are fantastic. You’ll get a great taste of fantastic leadership perspectives from folks who are exponentially smarter than I am.
This is deliberately a short blog post because I want you to use all the time you save to go download and read the rest of the document here. I encourage you to share this post with your friends and colleagues so they have access to the same great content you do.
So here’s my take on the difference between leadership and management:
It’s NOT Paradoxical – It’s Definitional
The difference between leadership and management is actually quite simple. You manage things. You lead people. It’s amazing there is so much confusion and writing on this point.
Management is task-focused. It’s short term. It’s a series of checklists and “to do’s” that ensure the work gets done. It’s how we execute tasks to achieve a specific desired outcome. It’s taking actions to hit a budget number or deliver a project on time. Said most simply, it’s the movement of personnel, materiel, and tasks with an exact set of results in mind.
Leadership is people-focused. It’s the words said and actions performed to inspire something deep within another. It is the demonstration of a belief that others come before you and your only interest is their best interest. Leadership entails articulating a vision of something larger than all who are involved and helping those
involved understand their role in achieving it. It’s providing the spark that fires someone’s drive to go take on seemingly insurmountable challenges because they believe in the desired outcome to the core of their being.
Leadership and management work hand in hand but truly are entirely different concepts.
So that’s my 0.02. What do you think? What do you think about the other perspectives in the LeaderLab document? Please share.
I am knee deep in performance reviews and this couldn't have come at a better time. Thank you for the insight!!!
Thanks for the post and for contributing.
The article is concise and on-target. Thanks.
Good topic, lots of perspectives in the link.
I think the idea of managers handling operations – making systems run smoothly – is not as simple and mechanical as it sounds. I think leading can be overrated if it means only pointing out a direction and even getting a bunch of people to follow along. Leaders can create disasters moreso that managers.
The other point I would make is that people and things can be more alike than you posit. The "soul of the machine" can be real. And we talk about "stiffs" and just how predictable some people are. Part of that is because some "things" are just made up by people: what is "a movement?" And a complex computer system might have emergent properties and a "mind of it's own."
In other words, there's an art to good management or leadership. Treating any person or thing with respect and sensitivity to change might be the best recommendation.
I would like to add, that management is getting things done, but leading is getting things done while workers are motivated.
Good post and good job in articulating the different between leadership and management in simple yet effective words.
I followed the link at the bottom of today’s post (04 Jan 2012) to this one, downloaded and read the paper. It was a great refresher as I work on my “What have you done for the company in the past year?” submission. Thanks very much!