Leadership vs. Management: Why You Need Both
Inspiration without structure - or too much structure without human connection - will doom your team.
Listen to this post:
Things didn’t look promising. The event was only a few months away and no sponsors had committed yet, little promo material was completed, and the keynote speaker just cancelled. Morale was low and the negativity was contagious.
Undaunted, Louisa rallied the troops. She called a team meeting, reminded everyone of the cause and the good work the event supports, and re-energized the team with words of gratitude and inspiration.
4 weeks later: no change. And now, having fallen to a lower place than before Louisa’s intervention, there seemed to be no chance of coming back.
What happened? Louisa is a powerful leader with strong vision, great communication skills, and infectious charisma.
Louisa is not a manager. Nor was there a manager in place to seize the momentum that Louisa instigated and follow it up with action plans and structure.
Leadership and management are not the same thing. They go hand-in-hand when creating change. To have real impact, you need both. One without the other is insufficient.
Confusing the two creates real problems, despite the popular business media's tendency to treat them as interchangeable. They are different skill sets entirely.
Let’s put the shoe on the other foot. Instead of Louisa stepping in with her motivational skills, what would have happened if DeAndre led that team meeting instead? DeAndre is known throughout the firm as a confident project manager who can get things done.
DeAndre may have opened the meeting with a timeline, replete with milestones and action items. He would have been positive, but all-business, taking a “let’s get this done and here’s how” tone. Who needs what resources? Let’s sort that out. Perfect.
Except for one thing. Leadership.
DeAndre is a great manager. The team needed a leader AND a manager. The team was faltering, and their spirits were low. They lost emotional connection to the work and invited a sense of hopelessness. In that frame of mind, most people would have a hard time facing a new timeline with anything but skepticism - perhaps even disdain. They needed a leader to re-inspire them, build them back up, and inject energy and confidence. Only then would they be ready for a manager to step in and guide the project to completion.
When leaders and managers work hand-in-hand, the team gets exactly what they need to stay on track and meet goals. The leader keeps the team inspired and focused on the end goal and the reason we’re here in the first place. The manager bridges the problem at hand to the end goal with organization, tactics, mentoring, action plans, and regular check-ins with team members.
Sometimes, the leader and the manager are the same person. That can work. And, you can train someone to be both. A naturally skilled manager can develop into a fine leader even as a natural-born leader can build an array of management skills.
The trick is knowing when to show up as a leader and when to show up as a manager.
When you get it wrong, you get a disappointed team that bought into a vision they couldn’t achieve, or a dispirited group begrudgingly checking off tasks on a project plan they don’t believe can succeed.
A strong leader is visionary, strategic. They are able to describe a change, an end-goal, a reason to keep moving forward. They are adaptable; they can change course when necessary to adjust to internal and external forces as they arise. A leader is innovative. Perhaps the leader is taking us to someplace entirely new or perhaps they are getting us to a familiar place by a completely different path. Most importantly, the leader inspires followers. By communicating this new vision, the leader invites people to redirect their thinking, their behavior, their resources to a new way of being or doing. There’s an element of charisma backed up by really strong communication skills.
Inspiration is fleeting, however. Without structure and follow-up, it fades quickly. It’s easy to get inspired. It’s even easier to forget that you were just inspired to do something and instead fall right back into your regular routine.
A strong manager motivates people to hang onto that inspiration and turn it into behavior, no matter how hard it might be to change habits and routines. A manager not only motivates people to do the work on the ground, but helps develop people by teaching skills, mentoring, assigning responsibility and offering feedback. In addition to helping people through the change described by the leader, the manager is organized, usually detail-oriented. They can manage projects by breaking them down into milestones, tasks, and specific assignments. They can describe success with metrics so that everyone stays on track. A good manager can spot process improvement opportunities along the way.
A good manager is also a strong communicator, but communication is consistent, clear, and motivating rather than lofty and inspiring. It’s the “what do we need to do today” kind of communication versus the “big inspirational idea” communication associated with the leader.
It would be reductive to say the manager is simply operational. Centering the needs of the people on the team while staying on task is the mark of a great manager. But there most certainly is an operational, as opposed to strategic approach to getting things done. The leader is responsible for setting the strategy. The manager is responsible for executing the strategy, working closely with their team members and acting as that liaison between leader and team.
How do you know when to lead versus when to manage? Read the room.
Does the team understand WHY they are doing the work?
Does the goal inspire the team to create a better world, a better product or a better experience?
Are the same conditions in place as when you started? Evaluate whether trends or changes in the world around you cause you to question the goal or whether you can achieve it as planned.
Does the current vision make sense, or is it time to reevaluate your destination?
If the answer is no to any of these questions, you need a leader to reset vision, inspiration and expectations.
Ask yourself these questions as well:
Does the team understand HOW to do the work?
Is there a clear plan in place for accomplishing the stated goal?
Does everyone on the team understand what they have to do and have the skills to do it?
Is there agreement as to what success looks like?
If the answer is no to any of these questions, you need a manager to oversee the process and help all team members contribute and succeed.
The popular press will use leadership and management (or leader and manager) as if they were synonyms. Scan the titles and you’ll see “management tips for leaders” or “leadership development for managers.” Be careful. Each has a distinct set of skills and a distinct role in the organization. They are not the same.
Importantly, while leader and manager are two different personas, they are not necessarily progressive or hierarchical. You can be a leader without mastering management. Mastering management does not imply the next step on your career ladder is leader. These are functions, not titles. There is plenty written about the danger of promoting a high producer to manager, when that producer may not have the skills to manage. Similarly, putting a highly skilled manager in a role that calls for an inspirational leader - or expecting a visionary leader to create and execute complex project plans - puts you in that very same danger zone. The skill set does not match the function.
Whether you are improving your own skills or helping team members develop theirs, be clear on the end goal. Be clear as to what problem you are trying to solve. Leadership and management can both be learned. Knowing the difference is a good place to start.
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Terrific thinking - thanks for sharing