Are You a Manager or a Leader?
Hint: You need to be both to be effective at any organizational level!
Most business books separate the characteristics of a leader from those of a manager. Managers are the ones looking at efficiency and aligning the details. They love large spreadsheets of numbers, are hyper-organized, and have the personalities of an empty cardboard box. Leaders, on the other hand, prefer big-picture thinking, inspiring groups, and have hobbies such as lion taming and flying experimental aircraft!
…or so the textbooks tell us.
In my experience, there is no such thing as a pure manager or a pure leader. We may as well be on a hunt for unicorns and fairies. To be effective in any job at the head of a team in the workplace, from front-line supervisor up to CEO, one needs both sets of skills – they need to be both a manager and a leader!
Broad vs Narrow Scope
As people climb the ladder of success from supervisor to manager, to executive, their scope of responsibility gets larger, their timeframe of interest gets longer, and their field of vision needs to expand to be broader and consider a greater environment for the business.
For example, one factor that differentiates management from leadership scope is the timeframe of responsibility. Management skills look primarily at being organized and systematic, ensuring that every resource is utilized optimally and according to a plan. Supervisors are using these skills to ensure today’s work gets done in the best way possible. Managers are using these skills to ensure this week or month stays on track. Executives, the so-called leadership class, also need these skills but are likely considering the quarter, year, or multiyear impact.
Many of the tools are the same, although the timeframe is different. As supervisors and managers discuss results with executives, often the presentation of information will be set into longer-term timeframes, but the supervisors and managers primarily live in the short term – optimizing the ‘now.’ The executive leaders need to be able to understand and relate to the details, but not ‘live deep in the weeds.’ Their interest in current micro-level performance should not extend past ensuring that a trend does not develop that impacts longer-term or broader results that will be material to the overall performance of the business.
Identifying the Vision
The key role of a leader is to identify the vision for the organization and then communicate it in a compelling manner that allows each employee to connect to the vision emotionally. Then the leader’s job is to serve and support the team in the best way possible to maximize performance.
The same can easily be said about a supervisor or manager. The scope of the departmental goals will be narrower and should be created in alignment with the higher goals of the organization in a cascading manner, however, the manager still needs to create the goal and communicate it in a compelling manner that each employee can connect with.
While the executives of an organization are using leadership skills to motivate and engage large groups of employees to generate better results, managers and supervisors need to do the same, but on a smaller scale. They need to motivate individuals to get certain tasks done timely, effectively, and efficiently.
Another way to put this is that the management skill of knowing what to do most effectively, and the leadership skill of motivating the team to execute the tasks, are needed at all organizational levels.
Inward vs Outward Focus
One other significant difference between leaders and managers beyond the breadth and timeframe of their scope of interest, is the direction of focus. Supervisors and managers will be focused primarily within the organization, while higher-level executives need to expand their scanning to the entire environment. The executive leaders need to be keenly interested in what is happening in their market, in government and regulation, and even in technology changes that could impact their organization’s future.
As Stephen Covey eloquently put it in his Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, the leader is the one who climbs the highest tree, looks around, and then yells back to the managers on the ground working to clear the jungle, “We’re in the wrong jungle!”
Here again, though, supervisors and managers need to also identify risks beyond their departments that might hinder results. They might be looking at the flow of materials from adjacent or affiliated operations, or even their external suppliers for instance – and then modifying their work strategy to optimize results accordingly. So once again, we see that managers and leaders need the same skills, just the scope changes as one climbs the ladder to higher positions of leadership.
Conclusion
To be successful at any level, supervisors, managers, and executives must have both leadership and management skills. All of them are leaders and all of them are also managers! The difference as one climbs to higher levels of ‘leadership’ is the scope of responsibility. The focus of higher-level leaders will need to be broader, longer-term, and include scanning of the outward environment. The artificial difference in definition between management and leadership should therefore be discarded and employees with aspiration and potential to climb the ladder of responsibility must be trained in both!
Do you want more tips or guidance to improve your leadership skills? Take our Executive presence course or get an experienced coach to assist you in fulfilling your career ambitions.
