Management vs Leadership: Ask anyone the difference between the two and the answer nearly always puts management in a negative light and leadership in a positive light. Is “manager,” then, an obsolete term of a by-gone era when “leaders” didn’t really lead or want their teams to think? When they just wanted people below them to follow orders and carry out commands whether they were happy about it or not? Is there even a place for “managers” in a successful organization these days?
What seems to be the resounding thought today is that management is about doing tasks and holding people accountable to those tasks, while leadership is about inspiring people to want to step up and engage. Peter Bouchard succinctly wrote on my Facebook query: “Leadership you want to follow. Management you have to follow.” Ouch for managers! That’s like your kid saying “I only love you because you’re my dad.” Who wants to do things they have to do? Matt Whitehead added: “Management is controlling people and leadership is inspiring people. “Do this…” is management. “I have a dream…” is leadership.” And we wonder what happened to employee engagement & retention!
Employee engagement and retention has plummeted over the past several decades. Research shows that tenure dropped from 23+ years in the 1950’s to only 4+ years in the 1990’s, and Forbes reports today that over 30% of people don’t believe they’ll be at their current job next year. Could this terrible turnover be the fault of management? Yes!–if by management we are talking about those managers who lack leadership skills and abilities. Jeffery Gitomer famously says: “People don’t like to be sold but they love to buy!™” I like to say: “People don’t like to be managed, but they love to be led.” Leaders inspire us, and around great leaders we feel that anything is possible. But being managed feels manipulative.
In one brilliant article I read on INC.com, the author said: “The truth of the matter is this: Every leader may not be a manager, but every manager should be a leader. It’s easy to see that leadership and management aren’t the same thing, but a manager who lacks effective leadership traits will drive a business into the ground faster than you can count to 10.”
We don’t need managers, we need leaders who manage! Unfortunately, too few people in “management positions” believe they are leaders and too few organizations do their part to inspire such beliefs about leadership. Instead of seeing leadership as a subset of skills that some managers possess and others don’t, I suggest you turn that premise inside out. Cultivate the skills, behaviors and attributes of leadership in every employee, and in a select few add the skill of management. Let management come through leadership, not the other way around. Change District Manager to District Leader, Store Manager to Store Leader, and so on. Give people the permission and skills to lead at every level and watch your company, organization or team skyrocket!
