The Difference Between Leadership and Management

Management is often confused with leadership, and vice-versa. It is perhaps understandable since managers sometimes need to provide leadership and leaders sometimes need to manage situations. But the bottom line is that they differ in approach, focus and the impact they tend to have on an organisation. In this post, the team at C-me answer the question "What is the difference between leadership and management?"

The Difference Between Leading and Managing

While leadership and management share some similarities they are not the same. Here are examples of how leadership differs from management.

About Leadership

Leaders define the landscape managers operate in. They take the risks, anticipate where things are going and often upset the status quo. Leaders are not intimidated by uncertainty and are the agents driving change.

Leaders are driven by a vision. They understand the road to realising that vision may require a turn into unchartered territory, but they keep everyone focused on the ultimate goal by inspiring them to do bigger and better things and communicating their faith in their team members.

Leaders often rely on their ability to anticipate challenges and opportunities. They have a highly developed sense of intuition and are able to formulate creative responses to situations that would have likely baffled a manager.

Leaders rely heavily on the members of their team to bring their vision to life. They know how to inspire trust and how to motivate people without needing to lord over them. Rather than being cowed, team members feel empowered and motivated by an effective leader.

About Management

While leaders define the landscape, managers establish policies and processes that enable the team to navigate that landscape.

While leaders embrace risk, managers tend to be risk-averse. Their job is to maintain order and ensure things get done in an efficient manner while ensuring stability and seeing that deadlines are met.

While leaders communicate a vision, managers are entrusted with seeing it through. That means assigning tasks and establishing performance expectations. Their job is not to inspire the team but to supervise their activities.

A leader's decisions are always made with the long-term goal in mind. A manager's decisions tend to be related to ensuring short-term outcomes while putting out fires before they engulf the project and fending off disruptions.

Conclusion

Leaders focus on inspiring team members toward a particular goal, while managers focus on establishing processes that will enable the team to execute the leader's vision while maintaining order and ensuring deadlines are met.