Are You a Leader, or Just a Boss?

Leaders provide value. Bosses have authority over others in the workplace — for good or ill, depending on how they choose (or how they are allowed) to use it.

Photo by rob walsh on Unsplash (my edit)

Leadership is a bit of a buzzword, like “synergy” or “corporate responsibility.” It’s used semi-copiously, but its meaning is often vague.

That’s partially because being a leader means different things in different situations. You might be qualified to lead a kitchen as a chef, with several chefs working under you, and be unqualified in other roles with leadership potential, like managing a bank. (I wouldn’t be qualified to do either, because I don’t have any experience in either the culinary arts or running a financial institution.)

Not everyone wants to be a leader. That’s okay. Leaders aren’t leaders if there’s no one to follow them. But there is a real, substantive difference between someone who exemplifies the qualities of a good leader and someone who is in a leadership-type role but just tells several individuals what to do because that’s their job.

The latter is not a leader. I think of them as being bosses or proto-bosses; they may represent important pieces of the overall system in place in a given business, but they behave like billiard balls. They are allowed no functional agency, or they’ve abdicated what agency they do have.

Instead, they go through the motions required for the whole system to run, which is important. But they could be replaced by anyone with a comparable skill set, which means their job security is probably lower than it could be.

With all that being said, it’s easy to understand why being a leader could be preferable to being a boss. But having a leader is somewhat better than having a boss, too.

If you have a boss at work (or in life), that person will tend to give out commands with little to no effort in any of the following:

informing their team of the goal(s) relevant to said commands

their team of the goal(s) relevant to said commands collaboration with team members

with team members listening to and acknowledging members’ concerns

and members’ concerns support in choosing the best method for carrying out tasks

in choosing the best method for carrying out tasks advice on what can be improved

on what can be improved feedback about what was done especially well

A leader does their work intentionally. They do not mindlessly or uncaringly order others to do things, and when mistakes or errors happen, they figure out how to make things better and help their team improve, too. A leader may be more like a mentor, in these respects, than a boss.

When a boss discovers their employee has made a mistake, the response is not necessarily productive. At best, you could hope for, “Don’t do that again.” But I once had a boss scream at me, making me cry, in front of customers. He thought I had bailed out of a shift without saying anything the day prior; I had left early, but I’d asked the shift supervisor, Francisco, before doing so. I’d explained to Francisco that I’d been working all day and was getting a migraine. (I wasn’t actually getting a migraine, but I felt more comfortable saying that than telling him I had extremely bad cramps.)

Francisco was more of a leader than this boss, whose name actually escapes me. (He was also clearly more memorable.) I felt that, if I had a question or needed something at work, he would help me or figure out who I needed to ask. He was a resource, not just a task-master, and I respected him as such.

I did not have the same respect for the boss. There’s a quote I love, from the movie Bridge of Spies:

The boss isn’t always right. But he *is* always the boss.

The film, for those who don’t know, starts Tom Hanks and tells the true story of the trial and subsequent prisoner exchange involving a Russian spy, Rudolf Abel, during the Cold War. Tom Hanks plays a lawyer, James Donovan, whose job it is to defend Abel in court, a job he takes very seriously.

His boss, however, takes it less seriously and only wants to give the appearance of a fair trial, which, as anyone who’s been in a similar situation could tell you, is extremely different and distinct from a trial which is actually fair. Abel, after listening to some of Donovan’s remarks, makes the above comment.

It’s awesome. And in a moment, it demonstrates something crucial that often gets ignored or brushed aside in high-stakes events: a sense of humor and, for want of a better word, camaraderie. Human connection between unlikely allies can be a fascinating thing, at least to me. It’s very hard to make that sort of connection with a boss, and when you can’t make that connection, motivating people can be downright impossible.

You may not care much about the industry in which you’re currently working. Lots of people are in the same boat, passion-wise. But most of us care about how others view us. Do you want to be the kind of person known for being a leader, or a boss? Think about bosses you’ve known in the past, and then think about leaders. Which would you rather be?

Would you rather just be in charge, or actually try to make things better? For me, that’s the most important question. In my own way, I want to be a leader, but I’ve never wanted to be a boss. I don’t care about authority; I care about doing good.