Leading Clearly: Leadership and management

Ask anyone if there is a difference between leaders and managers, and they will most certainly say yes. If you dig a little deeper and ask them to articulate this difference, they might run into some difficulty. The terms become a little foggy as the definition is reduced to a feeling based on previous encounters rather than a model to be duplicated.
Management is a skill by which you manipulate resources in a meaningful fashion to create positive results. In other words, managers typically must have a resource to manage to produce a result. This requires concrete thinking.
Outstanding managers are very good at working a process to completion. Wash, rinse, repeat, observe, refine. Managers who create positive results can rise in an organization as long as the manipulation of resources is all the organization values or measures.
Leadership is a skill by which one uses influence with people to create a positive result, and it’s quite different from management. Managers should develop this skill as well, though it should not be limited to managers. Leadership can be developed and utilized by anyone at any level of an organization.
What makes leadership different is that it is powered by trust. All leaders in an organization, no matter the positional level, gain influence by first establishing trust. Managers typically follow strictly defined policies and procedures, and leaders follow deeply held convictions. Leaders have the courage to act upon their convictions, and many times it’s these actions that cause others to believe in and pick up the cause.
Trusting people to do their part, once they’ve committed, is a tell-tale sign of a leader. The currency of trust is at the base of all leadership, and it’s the exchange of trust that under-girds and affects the quality of every relationship. In essence, management is based on resources and results, but leadership is based on relationships and results.
It’s very important to understand that leaders are not better than managers; they’re just different.

Management/leadership differences:
• Leaders are more abstract thinkers, and managers think concretely.
• When planning, leaders typically work from the desired outcome in the future and backward to the present; managers tend to work from the past and forward up to the present.
• Leaders embrace a big-picture macro-view, and managers gravitate to a snapshot micro-view.
• Language patterns reveal leaders saying things like, “How can we get it?” Managers say things like, “We don’t have it.”
• Leaders have a revolutionary streak; managers like to protect the status quo.
• Leaders put an emphasis on the “what” and the “why,” and managers emphasize the “how” and the “when.”
One parting thought: Leaders and managers are not born; they are made. Although all the ingredients might be present to make something, it doesn’t just appear. Someone must take the ingredients and apply a process to create the desired result. Likewise, there are no “born leaders,” and there are no “born managers.” Most have the ingredients of leadership and management but lack the process of development to create the desired result.
Both leadership and management skills are needed in great quantity for organizations to become and remain successful. Leaders and managers must continue to grow in their individual skill sets because when leaders and managers stop growing, the organization stops growing.  v
Tony Richards is a leader in the area of personal development and senior partner of Clear Vision Development Group, a Columbia-based leadership coaching and training firm. Visit them online at www.clearvisiondevelopment.com.