Leadership vs. Management

There is a lot of debate about whether or not a leader is something different than a manager. I've heard leadership defined a number of ways. As an example it's been said that managers exist to maintain whereas leaders drive change.

Part of the problem with the word "leadership" is that it's not a word invented by academia but came into being over a period of time. While academia gives words very precise definitions words that "evolve" tend to apply in a variety of contexts and are fairly general. Leadership is one of those words.

Everyone wants to talk about leadership but no one really knows what it is. There are more books about leadership than you can ever read and researchers continue to do studies and surveys on what an effective leader does. Still, no one can decide what a leader actually is or does. Does being a leader mean that you have been gifted with a set of traits that make you a natural leader? Does being a leader mean practicing a specific behaviors? Is it contextual? Is it simply being the right person at the right time? As a member of the International Leadership Association and avid reader of research on leadership I see these questions all the time, without any real consensus. The literature is inconclusive.

What I mean is that I think leadership and management are different from each other, but a manager must have a reasonable level of leadership skill and a leader, ideally, has good management ability.

I'd like to sum all of this up though with an idea. Leaders are magnets, managers are lasso's. When an organization adds people those people have different ideas and motivations. Managers exist to attempt to align the personnel's behavior and use of resources with what the organization hired them for. This is done by setting expectations, monitoring progress and providing feedback.

Leaders, I think, are more like magnets. Instead of aligning personnel behavior and motives through corralling behavior (think of a cowboy on a cattle drive) a leader pulls people toward them and/or the cause. This might be done through personal charisma or by simply being the right person in the right place at the right time, think of a group of people lost in the wilderness, the leader is the one with the compass and orienteering skills. Many times a leader simply emerges because a situation demands one, other times a leader emerges because they have taken upon themselves some mantle or cause which people are drawn to. As an example, Steve Jobs wasn't a leader because he signed the paychecks but he was a leader because followers believed that he was the right person with the right ideas to lead Apple.

I hope this gives you some idea on the difference between leadership and management. The truth is however that no real consensus exists on this matter, at the end of the day as a leader or manager we're in the business of getting things done.