Leadership vs. Management
As part of the coaching process that I follow, I try to assemble as much data as I can about my coaching client. That information includes 360 degree feedback data, style information such as the MBTI, as well as insights from interviews with bosses, board members, direct reports, and peers. Often I will also “shadow the person I am coaching to observe them in action. In the process of preparing for a new client, I had a conversation with one of the board members for the organization who shared with me his perspective on the difference between a manager and leader. According to this CEO, “the role of a manager is to get the most effective use out of the organization’s resources, and the role of a leader is to create a shared vision to help people do their best.
Now, the debate about the differences between what is a manager and what is a leader has been going on a long time and there are far too many references in this discussion to cite here. However, one of the things I have noticed is that there is an organizational belief that as one progresses up the corporate ladder through the ranks of manager, senior manager, director, and so on, there is an expectation , sometimes explicitly stated, sometimes not , that at some point a person will shift from being a manager to being a leader and do “the vision thing. Certainly, senior leaders , or more specifically, THE senior leader of an organization , need to be less involved in the minutia of running the organization and more concerned with it’s strategic direction. However, I offer several observations.
First, we mix up the terms “management and “leadership regularly in the way we talk about the people who run organizations. We typically refer to the people at the top of an organization as senior management , not senior leadership , although I am hearing the term “senior leadership team more often. Yet, when we reference them individually we often say they are the leaders of the organization , not the managers.
Second, we promote someone into management because he or she got great results as an individual contributor and we HOPE that they will be successful getting work done through others. We promote someone into a senior management position based on his/her ability to get work done through others by delivering results in a number of different assignments and then we HOPE they can think strategically and do the “vision thing.
Finally, regardless of the level of management one is in there are elements of management in that position as well as elements of leadership. Skillful and self-aware managers know the difference.