Leading and Managing
Two different activities, both necessary.
12 min
The distinction
Management and leadership are often contrasted as though one were superior. Both are necessary, they are different activities, and most roles require both.
| Management | Leadership |
|---|---|
| Planning and budgeting | Setting direction |
| Organising and staffing | Aligning people |
| Controlling and problem-solving | Motivating and inspiring |
| Produces predictability and order | Produces change and movement |
| Works within the system | Changes the system |
An organisation with strong management and weak leadership is orderly, efficient and unable to adapt. One with strong leadership and weak management has direction and energy and fails to deliver reliably. Neither is a virtue on its own.
Leadership is not position
A title confers authority, which is the power to require compliance. Leadership is the ability to obtain willing effort, and it is available to people at any level and denied to people at any level.
The practical difference: compliance produces the minimum that satisfies the instruction, and it is all authority can obtain. Discretionary effort — the initiative, judgement and care that nobody can require — is given, and it is given to people who have earned it. Most of the difference between an adequate team and an excellent one sits in that discretionary margin.
What leaders actually do
- Provide direction — a clear picture of where the group is going and why.
- Create meaning — connecting the work to something that matters.
- Enable people — removing obstacles, providing resources, developing capability.
- Set standards — of performance and of behaviour, and enforce them consistently.
- Make decisions, including uncomfortable ones, and take responsibility for them.
- Build the team — trust, cohesion and the ability to disagree productively.
- Represent the group outward, and protect it where necessary.
- Develop successors, which is the measure that distinguishes a leader from a competent individual contributor with a team.
The transition into leadership
People are usually promoted for being good at the work, and the new role requires different skills. The transition involves several genuinely difficult shifts:
- From doing to enabling — success now comes from others' output, not your own.
- From technical expertise to judgement about people and priorities.
- From being one of the group to being accountable for it, which changes relationships whether or not anyone wants it to.
- From solving problems to helping others solve them, and tolerating a solution that is good enough rather than the one you would have produced.
The most common failure is the new leader who continues doing the technical work, because it is familiar, satisfying and visibly productive — while the leadership work goes undone and the team remains dependent.