Management vs Leadership

I gave a talk at UberConfX last week. A couple minutes into the talk, a participant raised his hand to ask why I kept using the terms Manager and Leader interchangeably.

Did I think they were the same thing?

I quickly responded, “No” and posed the same question back to the audience. It resulted in a wonderful ad-hoc discussion on the difference between these two roles.

Here is my tldr reflection:

Management - doing things right

Leadership - doing the right things

Management is about coping with complexity

• Planning and budgeting

• Organizing and people staffing

• Must be fail-safe and risk-free

• Helping normal people who behave in normal ways complete routine jobs day after day

Leadership is about coping with change

• Setting a direction

• Motivating and inspiring

• Articulating the organization's vision

• Involving people in deciding how to achieve the vision

• Giving people a sense of empowerment and control

• Recognizing and rewarding success

Leadership compliments management, but it does not replace it.