Are leadership and management different? This is a popular question which may determine how a person sees themselves – am I a leader or manager? Is one better than the other?
Management theories date back to the early 1900s and were then built upon around the 1950s-1980s. So much has changed in the world since then, but there has not been much change in the way people are managed. These theories on how to manage people apply to the generations of the Baby Boomers (1946-1963) and Gen X (1964-1978). Research suggests that by 2020, up to 35% of the global workforce will be made up by millennials (1979-1995) and 24% will be made up by Gen Z (1996-2010). That’s 59% of the global workforce. So why are our methods still the same?
A study of 673 Fortune 500 and S&P 500 companies show that the average age of a CEO is around 50 years old, someone from the Gen X generation. If so, could it be that when it comes to managing, we are stuck in the past? Unwilling to change because we like how it always used to be? That the way we manage worked before, so why can’t it work now? Well the truth is that it is time to change. The people who work with us have changed and to win we need to adapt. People who adapt, win. Companies who adapt, win.
Therefore, if managers are not what’s needed in the modern era, what is? The answer is leaders. I do not like to refer to myself as a Project Manager. I see myself as more of a Project Leader because leadership and management are different. There are plenty of quotes and sayings out there about the difference and they tend to go something like this: “A leader shows you the way, a manager tells you the way.”
Below are the definitions of three key words:
- Manager – a person responsible for controlling or administering an organization or group of staff
- Leader – the person who leads a group.
- Lead – to go with one by holding them by the hand while moving forward
There is a strong difference between the definitions. The definition of a manager sounds almost mechanical. As if they’re dealing with numbers or machines. Sound familiar? The definition of a leader, on the other hand, has a human element to it. Last I checked, humans were humans, not machines. We have emotions, feelings, desires and needs. Maslow identified this over 50 years ago when he created the hierarchy of needs. But instead of treating people like humans, we used this knowledge to treat people like binary code, ones and zeros, numbers on a screen and if one had a bug, it was corrected, dispensable. That way of working does not work. It does not bring true lasting results, yet this is the way we have been taught to manage.
Leadership on the other hand, is more personal. Leadership accounts for behaviours, experience and emotions. A leader who does not account for the differences in people is no leader, but a manager. I want to clarify that there is nothing wrong with choosing to focus on management rather than leadership as one is not better than the other. This is because each situation calls for different roles. However, when people are involved in a task, then leadership is required. Without displaying the right behaviours of a leader issues will arise because people are not machines, people are people and people need guidance. But, a leader should not ignore a manager just because they’re aren’t leaders.
In short, yes, leadership and management are different.
Thank you for reading, JT
