Leadership Vs Management

What is the difference between leading and managing?

I have been contemplating this question more and more in recent days, the fundamental difference to me seems to be in the style.

While managing is reactive, leadership is being proactive by nature — which is why leaders emerge naturally and managers are appointed.

What does being proactive really mean?

Discover

Ability to discover skills, strengths, possibilities and potential in individuals that they themselves have not recognised is an important trait of being a leader.

Explore

Leaders take chances on people - a leap of faith to explore further what has been discovered. This requires a daring mentality as there is an equal chance of failure. But a true leader will be there to pick them up and learn lessons together out of the failure. Leaders don’t see themselves separate from that of the team, they are an integral part of the team in every way

Trust

Another key ingredient is trust.

Win the trust of your team by being transparent, open and honest. Admit to uncertainties, ambiguity and seeking advise. Leaders don’t hesitate to hide their vulnerability.

Trust the team members in return and provide a safe environment in which they can fail. Most people are held back by fear of failing. You will be surprised what a daring mindset often produces. It surprisingly leads to innovation and creative thinking when not restrained by conservative factors.

Experiment

Providing a secure environment to try this is vital — similar to the test environments we have in software engineering, provide a real-life soft fall environment to try out and iterate on ideas and for experimenting on new opportunities.

Guide

Ability to guide and gently steer people is quite a different experience from telling them what to do. Admittedly there are people who prefer the latter because it is easy. Guiding them towards a goal can illuminate several ways to achieve something from which you yourself can learn.

Leaders tend to carve a path which has not been trodden before. History’s successful leaders have always laid a path that no one has even imagined before them.

People follow leaders and feel managed under managers. While a manager is a role to play, leaders are individuals who become role models.