Management and leadership are often thought of as synonyms. There’s a significant difference between management and leadership.
Wikipedia describes management: “… the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives using available resources efficiently and effectively.”
It’s possible you think that’s the description for leadership, but it’s not. But what is leadership then?
What is leadership?
Leadership is often seen as a part of management. But I can just as easily see management as a part of leadership. And you don’t need employees to be a leader.
Leadership is easy to understand through the characteristics of a leader. Here’s three most important qualities leaders embody.
1. Leaders have a vision of a future. They believe in their vision and they’re ready to work towards that future even without help. And they spread the idea in any way they can.
2. Leaders are good with people. Leadership is based on trust, which the leader gains by providing to the followers what they want. Only someone who understand people, can give them what they want.
3. Leadership requires charisma/enchantment. Charisma and enchantment don’t necessarily mean attractive looks. Voice, speech patterns, eye contact, clothes, and of course the words used, are often more important than looks. I recommend “Enchantment” by Guy Kawasaki (my review) if you’re interested in enchantment.
If those are most important measures of leadership, then what is management? I wrote earlier this week about manager’s role. To sum it up, managers work to enable a future. Managers take a goal, created by their leader, and then use the available resources to accomplish that goal.
Difference of management and leadership
Simply put leadership is empowering people to work, management is enabling the work. The difference of management and leadership is blurry and difficult to see in practice, because most managers embody some characteristics of leadership. And many leaders work as managers, or at least deal with their goal’s management issues.
Managing requires you to interact closely with your employees/subordinates/followers. Leadership on the other hand is possible without personal contact to your followers. Or at least contact to a small part of your following can be enough.
Personal contact is the easiest and most effective way to create a following, but leadership is first and foremost based on the idea, or the future, the leader believes in.
The only reason I categorize articles about leadership under management, is simplicity. I believe there’s a significant difference between management and leadership, but I also believe managers should understand how to lead.
What do you think about management and leadership? Are they synonyms? Is one included in the other? Share your ideas in the comments below.
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