The Big Difference Between Leaders and Managers

Leaders are a causal force — they cause things to happen that were not going to happen without their influence.

They are future oriented and they envision possibilities that are often discontinuous with the past. They are adept at innovating, articulating a vision, architecting strategies, and inspiring growth and development in others on behalf of the vision.

Leaders are rich in determination and unwavering in resourcefulness. Thus, every person in every role has the opportunity and responsibility to demonstrate leadership — to be fully engaged and to perform beyond their day-to-day management responsibilities.

Both leadership AND management are needed

Managers attend to operational excellence and, at their best, deliver against expectations. Managers provide the business and its stakeholders with reliability, certainty, and predictability, all of which are essential to the viability and longevity of the organization.

Great managers attend to continuous process improvement, monitor progress against objectives, and track and report the data that allows for solid fact-based decisions. Thus, every person in every role has management responsibility — the requirement to ensure that others can rely on them and their teams to deliver as promised within the parameters agreed.

For an organization to achieve strong results, both leadership and management need to be present. Management allows for leadership, and leadership invites development as people stretch toward the new vision and its inherent possibilities.

In most large organizations, individuals who master the management responsibilities in a given role are seen as promising candidates for the next level, especially if they begin to offer ideas and strategic suggestions beyond their area of responsibility, or if they do outstanding work on a special cross-functional task force.

However, leadership, as many find out, is not simply an advanced form of management. Often when a promotion comes, a difficult transition process begins, in which the newly promoted individual needs to prove value and competency at the next level. To do so, the new leader must let go of managing the very processes and functions on which his or her reputation has been established.

A key is a strong leadership pipeline

When managers are promoted into leadership positions, instead of embracing their new roles and stepping up to lead in their new capacity, they sometimes stay stuck in the management of their previous jobs. If the transition does not go well, as in the case of the person who remains too attached to his or her previous role and does not learn to delegate and entrust others to do the job, the leadership pipeline becomes clogged. This is an especially noticeable situation in home-grown organizations, in which smart, talented people are promoted from within and not adequately supported in their leadership development.

Best-in-class organizations recognize the challenges of building a strong leadership pipeline. They recognize the fact that leadership is not simply an advanced form of management — they are actually separate skill sets, actions, behaviors, and competencies.

These organization take deliberate steps to ensure that newly promoted (and newly acquired) talent have the support needed to succeed at higher, more visible levels of the organization. In this way, they support the development of a leadership culture.

What are the greatest challenges you have faced when making the transition from a non-manager, to a manager, to a leader? How were you able to overcome those challenges?

This was originally published on the DecisionWise blog.