Leadership deals with the the vision and direction, but what management deals with is the day to day details of making sure that that vision gets done.
Leadership deals with the ‘where’, and management deals with the ‘how’. These are the kinds of distinctions that make it easier for you to understand when you need to be a leader, and when you need to be a manager. When you’ve got to deal with the details, you’ve got to manage. And if you’re trying to set direction, guess what? You’ve got to lead.
And so this happens at every level of the organization. So if you’re a team leader, or supervisor or manager, mid level manager or director and executive level, guess what? At every point of your day, you got to make the choice. Am I leading, or am I managing? What am I trying to accomplish here? Do I need to do this? Is this something I can delegate? And you got to understand that leadership deals with direction.
And that’s where most people get them confused; Leadership is big picture thinking, while management is dealing with the cogs, the nuts and bolts and making sure that everything works together. Ideally, you want someone that can paint a big picture, but you also need someone who can make sure that big picture gets created in reality.
So the difference there is really simple and I got a question for you. Which one do you spend most of your day doing? Do you find yourself leading more? Or do you find yourself managing more? Or is it more of a 5050? Make today count.
