Leader vs. Manager

Leadership and management are commonly seen as the same thing. They are not.  Leadership is also misunderstood to mean directing and instructing people and making important decisions on behalf of an organisation.  Effective leadership is much more than this.

A simple way to explain how management is different to leadership is:

• Management is mostly about processes, systems and procedures.
• Leadership is mostly about behaviour, people and relationships. 

We could extend this to say:

• Management relies heavily on tangible, measurable capabilities such as effective planning, the use of organisational systems and the use of appropriate communication methods.
• Leadership involves many management skills but generally as a secondary or background function of true leadership.  Leadership instead relies most strongly on less tangible and less measurable things like trust, inspiration, attitude and personal character.

Effective leaders are followed chiefly because people trust and respect them rather than solely because of the skills they possess.  Leadership is about behaviour first, skills second.

Do you agree? What do you think? 


(Contributed by Dean Cunningham, facilitator at Canoe Images)