What Is The Difference Between Effective Leadership and Management?
If you asked your colleagues about the difference between leadership and management, you would probably hear a variety of answers.The two are often confused, but they are not one and the same – and making a distinction between them is often what separates an okay work environment from a fantastic one.
“Not making the distinction often means neglecting leadership and being all about management,” says Miriam Duarte, a master trainer and executive business coach who has trained and coached leaders in startups as well as large and mid-sized companies like BMW, Shell, and Dell.
The difference between effective leadership and management
“Many leaders got their position because they were good at the job they had prior to their leadership position. Naturally, when they get promoted to become a leader, they often keep the operational results in mind, just at a bigger scope as they now lead a team,” adds Duarte.
This is how you end up with well-intentioned subject-matter experts who aren’t equipped to be leaders and lean on managing processes and tracking measurable aspects of team performance in their position. In other words, this is how you end up with managers in leadership roles that require leadership skills. Keep in mind though that management is not just about managing KPIs or optimizing workflows. It can also include managing people – think managing employee benefits, delivering performance reviews, or creating an incentive program.
“Leadership, on the other hand, includes people skills, guidance through purpose and vision, communicating inclusively and effectively, the ability to listen empathically, and so much more,” says Duarte.
Both types of skill sets support organizational goals, but the way they reach goals differ. “Management consists of controlling a group or a set of entities to accomplish a goal. Leadership refers to an individual’s ability to influence, motivate, and enable others to contribute toward organizational success. Influence and inspiration separate leaders from managers, not power and control,” according to Harvard Business Review.
Since execution is also important, both management and leadership complement each other. And because there are some areas of crossover – a strong manager can also possess leadership skills and vice versa – Duarte shared a few key differentiators in the table below.
1. Leadership
- Management
- Creating an environment where people feel like achieving group goals
- Providing a vision
- Developing others
- Team members feel empowered
- Has authority because of influence
- Focus on big picture
2. Management
- Things that can easily be measured usually are part of management. Think of budgets, KPIs, planning, controlling etc.
- Creation, execution and monitoring of processes
- Can be highly complex with significant responsibilities that can be clearly measured
- Has authority because of position in the organization
- “Zoomed-in” instead of big picture
How mixing up leadership and management affects teams
You may be wondering how this applies to your team. According to Duarte, not making the distinction between leadership and management responsibilities affects teams in a few ways. First, it erodes trust.“This often leads to team members keeping their valuable knowledge to themselves, trying to make themselves indispensable, team members not working together effectively, and tasks that involve various team members taking much more time,” she says. Additionally, team members don’t feel empowered and lack commitment and accountability, only doing what is asked of them and focusing on compliance over creativity. This creates a loss of morale.
On the other hand, leaders and teams who understand the key differences between effective leadership and management and leverage both have a competitive advantage in what Duarte refers to as a “VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous)” business world.
“Leaders are leading and managing humans, not machines. While machines need good management, humans need fellow humans. Since most organizations are lacking in terms of developing the leadership skills of their employees, making a clear distinction [between leadership and management] and actively working on developing people’s leadership skills is needed,” she adds.
The solution? Be honest with yourself about the current state of your team and whether you’ve prioritized management at the expense of leadership. Focus on leadership development. Make sure that the people who are promoted into leadership roles have leadership skills – not just technical experience or operational rigor. And set clear roles and responsibilities so that those in management roles can support the vision set by leaders.
