leaders, managers, blog, Toby Elwin

Leading and managing

leaders, managers, death star, empire, Toby Elwin

Leading this new station proves he is no longer mired in management

Managers manage.

Leaders lead.

Are these roles so different?

Managers are charged with a budget to manage resources against. Time needs resource management. People need resource management.

The manager needs to deliver to their budget and align their resources to successfully enable their team’s role to perform against the plan.

Does this allow a manager to maximizing their talent, to cultivate creativity in their team, or to take risks?

Leaders shape a vision. Leaders look beyond the horizon for opportunity and threat, calculate risk, and communicate goals.

Leaders are responsible for results against their vision.

Leaders make change, but look towards their managers to execute tactically.

Very simply: managing resources may compete with the ability to develop and communicate a vision.  The skills for management may be entirely different for the skills needed for leaders.

Perhaps one set of skills would fail in the other’s role; the identification and acknowledgment of this may be a large part of managing expectation – in the truest sense.

I feel cultivating success in either role is more important than expecting a manager to also dual-hat as a leader.

Both are very difficult roles, but both share communication and motivation a primary skill.

Subscribe to Email Posts and Join 711 New Friends
I believe in your privacy and will never sell or spam your email.

Share this Post

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.