Managing and Leading: What's the Difference?

Everyone is fascinated by "leadership". It's viewed as the secret ingredient that's needed to transform a good organization into a great one. But great managers are the backbone of successful organizations, and the truth is you need to have both kinds of people. The roles of leader and manager are completely distinct, with different responsibilities, starting points, and talents required to excel. Anyone can be a leader or manager, but to be great at either requires certain core talents.

Great managers turn each employee's talent into performance. They do this by making each employee believe that their success is the manager's primary goal. Employees will respond to this by giving their best effort. Great managers are tough on their employees; they hold them to high standards, and then show them how to achieve these benchmarks. They paint a picture of excellence in a role, and then coach their employees to embrace this vision.

Great managers commitment to each employee's success is driven by a form of spontaneous intuition commonly known as the coaching instinct. They are drawn to and thrill at the small successes of others, and this is a talent that is innate and cannot be learned.

Great leaders rally people to a better future that they see as a vivid image in their heads. Leaders are fascinated with the future, they are restless for change, impatient for progress, and deeply dissatisfied with the status quo. This friction between "what is" and "what could be" propels leaders towards that better future.

The core talents of great leaders are ego and optimism. The former is important because ego allows a leader to channel his self assurance, self confidence, and press them into the service of an enterprise bigger than himself. The latter is important because leaders must believe deeply and instinctively that things can get better. Not just hope they can be improved, or to put on a brave face. The possibilities of the future must seem so intense that they have no choice but to do everything in their power to make them real.

The necessity for great leaders to possess both optimism and ego means that they are born, not made. The skill of bringing the best performance from employees also cannot be learned. You either have this ability, or you do not. It is possible to be both a great manager and a great leader. but it helps to know when to change gears. Management starts with the person, while leadership starts with the picture of where you are headed.

Adapted from: Buckingham, Marcus, The One Thing You Need to Know ...About Great Managing, Great Leading, and Sustained Individual Success. New York: Free Press, 2005, pp 29-71.