1. Course and Steering. The word "leadership" comes from the Old English word "lad" for a "course". A "lode" is a vein that leads or guides to ore; a lodestone is a magnetic stone that guides; the lode-star is the name for the star that guides sailors, the Pole star. The word "management" comes from the Latin word "manus", the hand, from which we also get "maintenance" and "mainstay". Leadership guides by setting a ship's course. Management keeps a hand on the tiller.
2. Growth and Survival. Organisations are no different from any other living organism: they need both to survive and grow. Survival is necessary in order to meet the basic requirements of life: in individuals, food, water and shelter; in organisations, a profit, customers, premises, and work. Growth is also necessary so that, like the individual person, an organisation can make the most of what it is capable of. The maintenance of the organisation is essentially a management function: measuring, looking back, assessing, taking stock, taking careful decisions. Taking the organisation into areas of growth, change and development, to make the most of it, is what leadership is all about.
3. Resources and Potential. Management measures what it can count and see. A person in the enterprise is described by their name and title, measured by their output, listed in the database according to their skills and added in the accounts under the heading "manpower resources". Management deals with the past and how people performed to date. Leadership,on the other hand, sees people as capable of things you cannot measure and doing things they never thought possible. It deals with the future and how people could perform if their potential were realised.
4. Left and Right Brains. The left hemisphere of the brain is the seat of our logical and rational thinking. The right brain is the seat of our imaginative, creative and emotional thinking. While these two sides are distinct, they also work best when whole. The left brain is an analogy for management. It deals with what can be counted; detail; control; domination; worldly interests; action; analysis; measurement; and order. The right brain is an analogy for leadership. It deals with what cannot be counted; seeing things as a whole; synthesis; possibilities; belief; vision; artistry; intuition; and imagination.
5. The Seven S’s. Richard Pascale says that the processes that take place in organisations fall under seven "S" headings: strategy, structure, systems, shared values, staff, skills and style. The functions of strategy, structure, and systems are the hard S’s and the proper concern of managers because they deal with things or technology. The functions of staff, skills, style, and shared values are the soft S’s and the proper concern of leaders because they deal with people.
6. Art and Science. John Adair in his book "Leadership" compares management and leadership to the old dichotomy of Art and Science. Managers are of the mind, accurate, calculated, routine, statistical, methodical. Management is a science. Leaders are of the spirit, compounded of personality and vision. Leadership is an art. Managers are necessary; leaders are essential.
7. Short-Term and Long. When an organisation thinks about now and the near-future, it thinks of itself as a production unit. It sees the problems it might face as technical problems needing technical answers. When an organisation thinks about the distant future, it thinks about building, learning and growing. It seeks to identify and develop its opportunities. It defines itself by what it is, not by what it does. The difference between short-term and long-term thinking is the difference between an organisation that holds on tight to what it has and an organisation that stays loose and lets things grow. Organisations that need quick fixes rely on managers. Organisations that want to grow rely on leaders.
The difference between management and leadership is like the difference between male and female, sun and moon, night and day, fat and thin, hot and cold, coming and going, and so on. They are two sides to the same coin. In being the one, we see the other. While different and distinct, they are parts of the whole: essential contrasts, that in contrasting, make clearer the other.
They've written about it. They've spoken about it. They've conducted MBA courses on it. They've practiced it.
And they've certainly worshipped it.
And so they should. Leadership is critical, right? It's what gives companies direction -- what drives them onward and upward to success.
Without leadership a company would be all dressed up with nowhere to go.
And please don't confuse it with management. Leadership captivates us with the why and what; management bores us with the how, who, when and where.
Leaders are the visionaries. The thinkers. Those exceptional "big picture" people who inspire us to embrace their vision for the future.
Managers... well they're the people who can't lead. Managers lack big picture vision; they too mired in the details -- the small picture. And they're too busy organizing than orchestrating.
Only it's the managers who actually get us where we want to go. After all, what good is it having a road toward the future without an operational car to get us there?
It seems to me that in all this glorification of leaders and leadership... managers and management have been unjustly maligned... To the point where "management" is equated with being small-minded, reactive, controlling, even stifling.
As a result, while up-and-coming professionals, executives, entrepreneurs and small business owners, focus on developing leadership skills... they neglect to develop management skills. The very skills that get things done.
What skills are these?
Well, in my opinion, management is basically about allocating resources to achieve a goal. Great managers do a little more than that, but the manager's role is essentially to allocate resources -- whether people, money, tools, information, or any other resource -- and match those resources to tasks.
So while leadership may be responsible for determining what the goal is, management is crucial to achieving it.
Based on that, management is just as important to achieving a goal as leadership wouldn't you say?
And typically, for every leader with a compelling vision, a business needs a certain number of managers to organize the work and the workers, in order to achieve that vision. (It also needs an even greater number of workers but that's the subject of another article!).
So... if the average business needs more managers than leaders... why doesn't the business "intelligentsia" give equal -- if not greater emphasis -- to the development of management skills than to leadership skills?
Possibly because too much emphasis has been given to management than to leadership in the past... or possibly because having a big vision and inspiring people is so much sexier than the nitty-gritty of preparing budgets, hiring people, delegating tasks, monitoring performance, choosing vendors, and the "mundane" tasks of management.
Or perhaps the tasks of a manager are just plain obvious...
So obvious that many executives, professionals, entrepreneurs and small business owners find themselves in management positions... where they're full of vision and grand plans... but can't get the people they manage to actually do the things necessary to accomplish that plan and those grand plans!
Enough already!
We need more managers -- or should I say people with management skills -- not more leaders. Big dreams abound... the capabilities to access and allocate resources to achieve those big dreams are in far too short supply.
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Anna Johnson has sinced written about articles on various topics from Generation Y, Careers and Job Hunting and Careers and Job Hunting. Anna Johnson is the author of the How To Manage People System, including her book, How To Manage People (Even If You're A Control Freak!). Get Anna's FREE 12-page report. Anna Johnson's top article generates over 14800 views. to your Favourites.