Leadership Question: Are leaders and managers different?

If you have been following my work then you know that I love showing how my leadership principles apply in real life. If you haven’t, well then now you know. Here is the latest question I received and my response to the question:

“What do you think about the statement that leaders and managers differ? Do you agree? Why or why not?” – Ahmed

Fantastic question and one which I resonate with. I completely agree with the above statement, so much so that I even wrote a book titled ‘Managers Are Not Leaders’. Here is an extract to help with your question.

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 leaders and managers 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.

The world does not need managers anymore

The world has moved on. Peter Drucker, renowned management consultant and author whose writings hugely contributed to modern business management, identified in the 1990s that the world was in a “shift to a knowledge society.” Drucker’s statement shows that we are no longer reliant on tangible results, but intangible results, information.

Previous generations responded well to strong management techniques and close monitoring of activities (or micro-management – which I strongly dislike by the way); this was because we were in an era based on tangible products. For example, on a factory production line, one worker = three product components per hour. Highly measurable and if production slipped, it was easy to discipline that person so they improve, or replace that person with another. People were just another cog in the machine where tangible management techniques were used to deal with tangible results.

Things are different now. We are in an era of information where people bring intangible skills to a company, which are harder to measure and track.

For example, within the Civil Engineering industry, a person is often hired for their ability to deal with high pressured situations, for having a high attention to detail, a good engineering background, for having a strong team approach, for being creative or for being one who can lead a project. How do you measure this? How do you measured one’s ability to lead? How to measure one’s ability for being able to deal with a high pressured situation? Can we set metrics like: per day you will make four people feel committed to the project or you must be in one high pressured situation per day and deal with it successfully? No, because intangible results cannot be measured in the same way as tangible results. What can be tracked however, is results and success.

This is why the current generations, who make up the majority of our workforce, do not like to be managed. Our current and future workforce bring intangible assets to our teams and companies which cannot be managed. They need to be led.

• They need to be shown the way. Not told the way.
• They need to be guided and coached. Not restricted and reprimanded.
• They need to be treated with respect and freedom. Not belittled and micromanaged.

Hamza Kahn, speaking at TedxRyersonU in 2017, said that “You manage things. You lead people.”

I trust this helps, JT.