The differences between managing and leading – and why you need both

Can you tell the difference between someone with strong management skills and strong leadership skills? These skills appear to overlap to the casual observer, often virtually indistinguishable. Too little leadership and you won’t build a strong culture or inspire people. Too little management and you’re an empty suit, giving tedious speeches and writing memos. You’re job is to find a balance between these two poles, learning to invest in your chosen craft by building on your technical management skills while also bolstering your leadership skills through helping others and building relationships.

Management skills involve organizing and prioritizing tasks around specific objectives in a team-based environment. Logistical work. Learning how to put together an agenda for a meeting, hiring, firing, HR activities, building a staff schedule, invoices, and action plans. These are hallmarks of management as a skill, which can be deployed in many settings. Effective management is just as useful professionally as personally. From high-level project management to mundane vacation planning, breaking down complex tasks and projects into component parts is the essence of effective management.

Take away management skills and you’re the type of person who spends their entire time giving great speeches, motivating others, but unable to get any real work done or deploy a team effectively. These people overcompensate with personality what they lack in skill. The junior executives who always seem to look the part: sharply dressed, charismatic, charming, but without tangible skills. Left to their own devices with a large project, these are the chronic delegators, always happy to pass the work along to more qualified subordinates.

Leadership is the ability to cast vision and to inspire others to achieve that vision. These skills manifest in different ways but all personalities are capable of leading. It isn’t reserved for the Type-As or Captain America archetypes. All it takes to lead is the tenacity and passion to pursue clear goals. That’s because passion is infectious, regardless of the source. Everyone can share their passions and vision with others; this is the essence of leadership, connecting with other people on a deeper level.

We’ve all met or worked with people with lackluster leadership skills, over-reliant on their proficiency in a job, without realizing how crucial the human element is. These are your classic Peter Principle employees, promoted to the level of their technical competence and emotional incompetence.

The largest fallacy regarding leadership is that you have to be a manager in order to lead. This is false. Consider your experiences in recreational activities or group projects in school. The people that are the obvious leaders in those situations can’t discipline or fire you, but they have a recognizable charisma and influence. Leaders are the people willing to put skin in the game and share their vision for what’s possible. Whether it’s a new way of thinking, teaching others how to perform better, or simply leading by example – leaders show their abilities.

Take time to reflect on where your current job needs the most management skill and leadership skill. What are the most critical technical elements in your job? What is it important for you to understand? What are the objective measures of your performance? Or how about key relationships? Who are the people who need to believe in you, feel positively about you, and buy into a vision that you set for the future?

By taking time to think on these two distinct skills and how the interface with your role day-to-day, you’ll be better able to set priorities and ensure that you’re staying grounded with the things that have an impact on how effective you are in your role, regardless of where you fall on the organizational chart.

Good luck out there.

-Patrick

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