Being a Leader vs. Being a Manager

The following is adapted from “Workplace Warrior—Insights and Advice for Winning on the Corporate Battlefield,” by Kay Hammer (AMACOM 2000).

It is important to distinguish between the terms leader and manager. If asked to choose which are more important, skills in leadership or skills in management, most of us would immediately say skills in leadership. Yet the skills of being a good manager are also important to a leader.

What distinguishes leaders from good managers is that they not only have a good mix of management skills, but the ability to win the hearts and minds of the people they lead so that they have faith that the correct values are in place even if they are not privy to the details. A leader’s talents not only include an understanding of the skills of the people they manage, but a talent for empathy and storytelling.

Being a good manager is a demanding job:

• You must excel at analysis to track the progress of multiple people assigned to multiple tasks and to help determine the best set of trade-offs when something unexpected happens—and it always does.
• You must make the right judgment calls about how much detail to present to your managers, peers and subordinates in order to keep them apprised of your organization’s progress and to ask them for input when some cross-functional cooperation is required.
• You cannot be afraid of conflict.
• You must be able to say hard things directly but fairly, whether it’s to an employee regarding his performance or behavior, a peer regarding some problem in delivering on commitments, or even your boss, if you think she has made a bad judgment call.
• You must be able to encourage people to grow in their interpersonal and professional skills. You must understand how to honestly and accurately present the company’s decisions and priorities in a way that addresses the concerns of the people who report to you, while inspiring their loyalty and commitment. (Note that you cannot effectively achieve this last goal unless you are yourself either at peace with the company’s decisions or a consummate actor or actress).

What people fear or want most in a leader:

Having a strong leader can be comforting. If we are under the guidance and protection of someone powerful whom we also respect, it can significantly reduce the amount of anxiety we feel about the aspects of our life that we cannot directly control. And yet the very things we look for in a leader—power, authority, responsibility and courage—also make us somewhat afraid of that person.

Leadership skills:

Power
People obey a leader they fear but follow a leader they trust and respect. The big difference is how the leader values power and how he obtained it. Leaders may value power but only to the extent that it helps them achieve their goals. Because leaders do not value power for its own sake, they are often willing to take risks and oppose those higher in the hierarchy to advance their case. As a result, they gain power in the eyes of the people they represent through these successful encounters with the power structure.

Authority
Authority is the assumption of power—the assumption that you have the right to the power you have obtained and that it is acceptable for you to act on it. When a leader assumes the mantle of authority, she takes on not just responsibility, but the right to determine and judge. Part of what we want and expect in a leader is someone who will make and articulate hard judgment calls so that we can see justice done without personally having to articulate them ourselves. However, we always run the risk that one of those judgment calls will be directed at us, which creates a sense of anxiety.

Responsibility
Most of us enumerate our responsibilities in terms of what we personally should do. While we expect our leaders to be responsible for the welfare of the people they lead, they are not personally responsible for performing the required tasks. Instead leaders are responsible for assuming the authority to decide what should constitute the group’s priorities and to ensure that each individual in the group performs his or her assigned tasks adequately.

Courage
Probably the most important attribute we want from a leader is the courage to act for the group’s benefit with minimum regard for his own well-being and self-interest. Taken to extremes, this courage can lead to martyrdom. While we know courage is critical to a leader’s ability to succeed, we are often uncomfortable with it, both because we worry about summoning our own courage to follow and because we fear we may be victim of some collateral damage should the leader fail.

Why people are hesitant to become leaders:

Most of us would rather be appointed to a position of power than actively seek the position, usually because we are afraid to acknowledge our virtues. On the one hand, this tendency can be seen as modesty but, on another, it is a form of cowardice.

Having the courage to acknowledge your talents and power can help you rise to the role of leader, but it is typically not the driving force. Frequently, courage is kindled when your conviction or anger about some situation becomes so strong that you are willing to run the risk of failure and of losing the support of the very people you are depending on to help you succeed. Ironically, when people sense this level of resolve, they are most willing to follow.

For more information about “Workplace Warrior—Insights and Advice for Winning on the Corporate Battlefield” and AMACOM’s other business titles, click here.

Also, consider the following AMA seminars:

• The Voice of Leadership: How Leaders Inspire, Influence and Achieve Results
• Leadership Skills for Supervisors