I gave a talk at UberConfX last week. A couple minutes into the talk, a participant raised his hand to ask why I kept using the terms Manager and Leader interchangeably.
Did I think they were the same thing?
I quickly responded, “No” and posed the same question back to the audience. It resulted in a wonderful ad-hoc discussion on the difference between these two roles.
Here is my tldr reflection:
Management - doing things right
Leadership - doing the right things
Management is about coping with complexity
Planning and budgeting
Organizing and people staffing
Must be fail-safe and risk-free
Helping normal people who behave in normal ways complete routine jobs day after day
Leadership is about coping with change
Setting a direction
Motivating and inspiring
Articulating the organization's vision
Involving people in deciding how to achieve the vision
Giving people a sense of empowerment and control
Recognizing and rewarding success
Leadership compliments management, but it does not replace it.
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