Manager Vs. Leader: A Comparison Table

You may not need to be a manager to become a leader, but you do need to be a leader to become a manager.

It may sound obvious to some but unapparent to others that:

• Managing is a technical expertise, leading is a sociopolitical skill.
• Management and leadership diverge widely in their purpose, function, process, structure and culture.
• The causes of a manager and those of a leader can often be conflicting.
• The role of manager and that of leader are the two sides of the same coin.
• Most managers – new and experienced – take one for the other.

When employees rant about their “bosses”, they are mostly referring to their “leaders” rather than their “managers”, even when those leaders and managers are the same people.

People cannot be managed in the same sense that resources can be managed. People can only be led. When a manager is managing, he’s merely managing resources. That’s why the notion of managing people is nonsensical at best – you can only lead by influencing your people.

Management and leadership have an asymmetric relationship: you don’t have to be a manager to lead; but you do need to be a leader to manage.

Here’s a comparison to illustrate the divide between a manager and a leader:

Dependency

• Manager: Relies on political authority and obedience.
• Leader: Relies on political loyalty and fairness.

Function

• Manager: Maintains organizational capability and capacity; contains people by managing tangible things; uses technical expertise.
• Leader: Maintains organizational readiness and propensity; influences/creates intangible things by organizing people; uses social skills.

Process

• Manager: Enforces cooperation by hook or by crook.
• Leader: Facilitates collaboration or co-creation.

Structure

• Manager: Leans towards authoritarian governance.
• Leader: Leans towards meritocratic or democratic governance.

Culture

• Manager: Influences the team culture by injecting their own personal culture into it.
• Leader: Influences team members’ personal cultures by shaping team culture.

Purpose

• Manager: Aims to evolve the organization by optimizing people performances.
• Leader: Aims to evolve the organization by optimizing people growth.

The real challenge is that if you are a manager, then you are also a leader at the same time. You don’t just have one role to play – you have two roles to play but they sometimes conflict with each other.

It makes sense for you to say “you do this because I said so” as a manager, but it makes no sense to say the same as a leader. As a manager, you don’t necessarily need trust to have your team do things, because your political authority is your primary tool – so good a tool that it’s not only effective but also efficient. But as a leader, trust is the essential ingredient to loyalty and a healthy team culture – so essential that you can’t even sustain your team without it.

The implication is that in a lot of cases, you are not really playing the two roles at exactly the same time. More likely, you are constantly switching between the two roles to make appropriate decisions and take respective actions.

How do you walk this dueling fine line?

Here are four critical factors to consider:

• Just cause and fair transparency
• Respect for expertise and thought leadership
• Expertise management and automation
• Democratic governance and democratic oversight

Lead with a just cause and manage with fair transparency. Help your people believe in the team’s purpose and cause that you believe in. Make decisions and justifications transparent in both directions. Those behaviours lead to trust.

Respect expertise and establish thought leadership. Looking from an organizational perspective, many traditional expertises are “vertical” – they can work in relative silos exactly because they formed through the division of labour. But nowadays, new and emerging expertises are “horizontal” – they don’t work in silos and they require collaboration and integration to benefit the organization as a whole. The implication is that, for those horizontal types of expertises, you can neither manage nor lead without a deep respect for and thought leadership of them. That is not to say you have to have literally worked in a specific expertise to be able to manage or lead, but you do need to know enough to know how to truly respect it and build your thoughts on it. Those behaviours lead to loyalty.

Implement automation and expertise management. In the past, most traditional expertises were complicated, self-reliant, stable, and stratified. Nowadays, new and emerging expertises are complex, open, dynamic and connected. In the past, managing projects meant managing project staff, budget, timeline and quality. Nowadays, managing projects means even more things, including managing expertises. Traditionally trained project managers often don’t have the experiences nor the skills to manage those new and emerging expertises, because those expertises demand a different type of power to be properly used – the power to synthesize and integrate horizontally (cross-function) rather than vertically (along the organizational hierarchy). Only higher level of automation and proper expertise management lead to effectiveness and efficiency in most organizations of today.

Facilitate democratic governance and democratic oversight. To a manager, a team can be governed “because I said so”. However, that doesn’t work for a leader. Your people need to feel fairness and confidence to devote their loyalty to you. That sense of fairness and confidence doesn’t come easily from authoritarian governance; instead, it emerges from democratic governance that’s often enabled and sustained by democratic oversight. As in societies, democracy in a team or organization is difficult to do – far more difficult than “because I said so.” That’s why being a leader is a higher bar for being a human than being a manager. The sustainble integrity of a team comes with your expertise as a manager and with your humanity as a leader.

You may not need to be a manager to become a leader, but you do need to be a leader to become a manager.

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