Leadership vs. Management

[Guy Farmer]

A business owner asked me whether he should be concerned about leadership before management or how the two interact. We worked together to find an approach that would work for him. From my experience, it’s helpful to develop a coherent strategy that builds leaders and then managers based on their interests. In this way companies can hire and staff positions based on what people really excel at.

Leadership development refers to building on people’s existing strengths to help them become leaders based on their innate talents and abilities. Management development applies to building the skills necessary to address certain tasks.

My clients have told me that management is about trying to control everyday events while leadership is about helping people and organizations grow. When I work with organizations I stress the importance of creating a foundation that helps build leaders prior to putting management guidelines into effect. This approach gets rid of the headaches related to trying to compartmentalize leadership and management because it creates a continuum, a unified vision for the organization.

The idea is that if one focuses on building an environment that encourages people to be leaders they will naturally be more motivated to perform well in all areas that apply to their jobs.

Regards,

Guy
I help build excellent leaders.

[Craig Brown]

I put a slide deck together on this topic. It's here if you want it. It also refers to another slide deck by a group called Linked2In where they basically asked the leadership v management question at linked in and then collated answers. It's interesting stuff.