Management Vs. Leadership: Five Ways They AreDifferent

Mar 27, 2016, 10:41pm 290,627 views

For years we were taught that management has to do withforecasting, budgeting, planning and controlling. Managers weretaught to manage, not to lead.

New supervisors and grizzled management veterans were taught howto assign work to subordinates, how to evaluate their teammates'work, how to counsel people on performance problems and how to hireand fire staff members. Everything we were taught about managementassumed that the manager would know what to do and was calling theshots.

These days we understand that the old-fashioned view of amanager's duties is wholly insufficient for the new-millenniumworkplace.

Responsibility for a team of people and its success -- not tomention each team members' well-being and professional development-- is a big assignment to take on. Leadership has very little to dowith controlling, budgeting and so on. It has little overlap withassigning work and evaluating it.

Our traditional view of management is task-based and mechanical.In that worldview, we don't think about topics like "How are myteammates holding up? Are they stressed out? Are they feeling goodabout the future and about the energy on the team?"

For years we pretended that human energy isn't a factor in ateam's success, even though anybody who has ever been on any kindof team knows that the team energy, also known as trust level, isthe whole ballgame!

We can use the carrot and the stick to get people to perform fora while but eventually, if they don't care about the mission, abouttheir leader and/or about one another, the team will fracture andlose steam. It's inevitable! Today we know that empathetic,trust-based human leadership is not only the most effective way tolead a team but also the most profitable way to run a company.

Here are five enormous differences between managers and leaders.If you hold a leadership role now or aspire to do so in the future,think about steps you can take in each of these areas.

Mission

The traditional view of management assumes that a manager's jobis to run an apparatus -- perhaps a corporate Credit Department ora team of programmers. There are clear inputs and outputs andexpected results from the engine each manager is responsible for.The manager's job is to keep the machine running smoothly.

In that worldview, the people on the manager's team areessentially machine parts. They are interchangeable. Once they arehired into a role, their job is to perform that role (to run theirpiece of the machine) according to goals and standards thatpreceded them and that will outlast their tenure in the job. Thepresumption is that the machine is more important and more powerfulthan anyone who helps to run it.

Leadership takes just the opposite view! The energy on your teampowers everything you will accomplish.

The machine can change whenever it makes sense to change it,even many times a day. Maybe your machine should change, or maybeit's time to junk the machine and invent something totally new.People are creative. Machines in general are not.

Leaders allow people to design their own jobs as much aspossible and to put their own stamp on their jobs.

A leader is not working to achieve machine-like processperfection to be repeated over and over until the end of time.

A leader and his or her team have a mission. They all know whatthe mission is and they know their piece in it. Maybe at one pointyour mission is to replace your outdated Credit Departmentprocedures with new procedures that are faster and simpler. Apartfrom the fact that they have a job and need the paycheck, yourteammates know what the Credit Department modernization means forcustomers, for themselves and for the company.

A mission has a beginning, a middle and an end, no matter whatthe mission is. When you complete the mission, you'll start a newone.

Maybe your mission is to produce an off-Broadway play or toinvent a better mousetrap. Leadership is inextricable from aspecific mission that people are excited about. Without a mission,there is no place to lead your team toward! Without a mission,where are you headed?

Who can get excited about doing the same things day after day,year after year, to no visible end except to make a few executivesrich? There has to be more to the mission than that, and part of aleader's job is to explore and exalt the connections between his orher team's mission and each team member's personal mission.

This is why I write about plugging into your power source atwork, whether that means using a different part of your brain orgetting to teach what you know or another element that important toyou. We all need that power jolt at work. We all deserve it,too!

Self-Awareness

The old-fashioned, command-and-control view of management didnot require that a manager look in the mirror, but leadershiprequires that activity of a leader every day.

A leader is someone who get outside his or her busy brain to seehim- or herself rather than being controlled by his or heremotions, especially fear.

Fear is the emotion that makes managers freak out and bring thehammer down. It makes some of them yell at subordinates or put thefear of termination into them so that people skulk around in terrorthat they'll make a mistake.

That kind of management is prevalent but it is the opposite ofleadership. Leaders have the confidence to lead through trust. Theydon't have to make threats. They can say, "I hired you and youchose to work with me so obviously we both trust one another, andthat's good because we will need that trust! I won't second-guessyou. I hope you won't second-guess me. We'll talk about everythingwe need to talk about. You'll know your job much better than I do.I will learn from you and with luck you might learn something fromme."

Leaders know they are not always right. They have enoughself-esteem to say, "Did I say that last week? I must have missedmy morning coffee because that was not what I meant to say. No,don't do what I said -- you're right, do what you know is best.Thank you for clarifying that point. Always tell me when I saysomething off-the-wall like that. I appreciate it!"

Risk And Trust

Trusting a person you are not in love with or related torequires you to take a risk. In the accepted view of management,there is no such risk, because the manager by virtue of his or herposition has all the authority. In our modern view of leadership,there is risk. You might trust the wrong person. So what? That'show you'll learn. You won't learn anything if you never trustyourself enough to put your trust in people around you.

Leadership requires you to rely on someone else withoutthreatening them or offering them rewards if they do what you wantthem to do.

You have to trust their instincts and trust yourself to put yourfaith in someone who isn't you. That is hard for a lot of managers,and it is something we should talk about more than we do at staffmeetings and management training sessions.

We should talk about how scary it is at times to stop callingthe shots and stop being the boss, and to let the brilliant peopleon your team carry the ball.

Two-Way Learning

Leadership rests on trust and learning. When your team ispowered by mojo and feeling good, the learning will be palpable.People will say, "Oh, dang! I just realized that your idea for theproduct brochure could be an amazing video, too! Want tocollaborate on that?" All it takes for people to come alive at workis trust. When people are wary of sharing their ideas, it's becausethey don't trust that their good ideas will be handled with care.That isn't a failing on the part of the wary person.

We learn best through our experiences and the old expression"Once bitten, twice shy" is nowhere truer than at work.

If the trust level on your team is too low to supportcollaboration, it's vital for you as a manager to figure out whatenergetic logjam is causing that problem and dismantle it.

People have good antennae. When they don't trust you, thecompany or one another, it means you have trust-building work todo!

When your Team Mojo level is right, you will learn from yourteammates, they will learn from you and all of you will learn fromone another.

If the manager is always the subject matter expert, too, thensomething in your environment is out of whack. That's a waste ofincredible life experience, insight and perspective that only agroup of switched-on collaborators can bring to bear on yourorganization's challenges.

Find Your Voice And Speak Your Truth

The last difference between managers and leaders is that being amanager in the old-school view doesn't require a manager to findher voice and speak her truth.

I went to countless management training sessions as a youngsupervisor. We learned about rules and procedures and timemanagement.

Nobody ever told us "At times it will be scary to tell your bosssomething s/he doesn't want to hear, but you have to do it anyway-- that's how you'll grow muscles and grow your credibility."

We didn't talk about that. We didn't talk about the critical,soft-and-squishy parts of leadership. We had to learn those thingsfor ourselves.

Now we are all coming out of the closet. We are all becomingaware together of the wonderful fact that going to work doesn'tmean leaving your personality at the door.

Even though there are messages hitting us from all directions atwork telling us to hush up, pipe down and go along with brokensystems and broken thinking, we don't have to listen.

You may stay quiet for a while because it's easier to bite yourlip than to start a conversation that might tag you as atroublemaker, but before long it will hit you that you have to findyour voice.

You have to say what you feel or else you'll feel like you'retaking a paycheck for the service of hiding your true personalityand playing the part of someone who is only half as smart and halfas human as you are.

You'll get tired of that deal one day. You are too mighty to bea doormat, and it won't help your customers or shareholders for youto stay silent when there are topics that desperately needairtime.

Speak up! That's what leaders do. Everyone is a leader, andeveryone is CEO of his or her career. You run your life and yourcareer.

What is your vision? What is your first step in reaching it?

Question

1.) According to the article, what are the five enormousdifferences between managers and leaders? Which difference is themost impactful and why?