Management vs. Leadership: What’s the difference?

Episode #267 Management vs. Leadership: What’s the difference?

THE WORLD ISN’T BLACK-AND-WHITE

When we set out on this business journey together five years ago, Em and I decided we couldn’t really consider ourselves to be successful until we’d been trolled on social media. It’s not that we’re dysfunctional, but we knew from the get go that if there was no pushback from the world at large, we probably weren’t really breaking new ground the way we needed to.

During my executive career, I learned that no noise = no change, and we were absolutely committed to making a real difference in the world of leadership. So, whenever the trolls come out, we have a laugh with each other. We confirm that we’re on the right track, and then we double down.

The content that people most often seem to take issue with are the myth-buster pieces that I put out. Are happy workers really productive workers? Why is leading from the front a bad idea? Why do consensus-based decisions deliver inferior outcomes? Call me crazy, but I love nothing more than challenging conventional wisdom.

Which brings me to today’s episode: what’s the difference between management and leadership?

I’ve been accused several times on social media of conflating the two. In other words, treating management and leadership as one concept and using the words interchangeably. And it seems that the less real world experience these people have in managing others, the more indignant they are about me calling management, leadership (see how I did that!?)

So I’m going to start this episode by talking a little bit about the traditional concepts of management and leadership. And then (this is pretty simple) I’m going to give you some real-world examples of why they’re so incredibly intertwined that it’s hard to separate them.

HOW CAN WE SEPARATE MANAGEMENT AND LEADERSHIP?

With all forms of social media, the wider the distribution of the content, the more likely it is to upset someone.

I received a very indignant comment on an article I’d written for Harvard Business Review, which HBR later posted on its LinkedIn page. HBR has around 15 million followers on LinkedIn, a fair percentage of whom I suspect believe their own bullsh!t. But it also attracts some incredibly smart and experienced leaders. So that’s the type of forum where I expect to be challenged.

This particular post received about 25,000 reactions and over 500 comments, which were almost universally supportive of the insights in my article. So we’re probably talking about several million views. But, as is the case with human nature, the comment that stuck out to me was the one that said, “This is ridiculous. In the first paragraph, the author conflates management and leadership. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” Okey-dokey. We’re right on track!

But over the following days, I found myself thinking a little more deeply about this comment. Was I actually inappropriately mixing the concepts of management and leadership together in a way that was either confusing or misleading? Was I taking a shortcut? Was I missing some important distinctions between the two?

There’s no shortage of quotes on the differences between management and leadership from some of the wisest minds in the business.

Peter Drucker said, “Management is doing things right. Leadership is doing the right things.”

Stephen Covey said, “Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out.”

Tom Peters said, “Management is about arranging and telling. Leadership is about nurturing and enhancing.”

Okay. So any person who’s prepared to step on the toes of these titans is either crazy-brave or just plain stupid. I genuinely hope I’m the former.

The way I’d describe the relationship between leadership and management is this:

“Leadership and management live on a continuum–in a spectrum of subtle gradients. They’re intrinsically linked and they can’t be separated by black and white distinctions. You can’t be a great leader unless you’re also a good manager. And the converse is also true: you can’t be a great manager unless you are also a good leader.”

Whereas I don’t want to take anything away from the well-meaning individuals who write about the differences between leadership and management, it’s complete nonsense to portray leadership as somehow virtuous and desirable, and management as somehow ignoble or undesirable. And it’s unhelpful to the new breed of upcoming leaders to perpetuate this mental frame.

As my executive career progressed, I learned that I was much better at leading than I was at managing, and this was a real problem for me. It diluted my ability to optimize team performance. So I had to put a lot of work into becoming a better manager, and if I hadn’t, the people I led would’ve been much worse off in the long run.

I’m going to give three examples to illustrate the symbiotic nature of the disciplines of leadership and management, and hopefully in doing so, convince you that any distinction between the two just isn’t really helpful. I’m not doing this to ignore the underlying principles of leadership and management, but rather to convince you that your energy is better spent by focusing on more important things.

Example 1: SETTING TEAM TARGETS

Setting targets and building work plans is clearly a function of management. Most larger companies have an annual planning process where they take all the inputs from the people inside the organization and allocate resources to the work:

• Often, there’s an overlay of external input from consultants who assist in developing strategic and tactical plans

• Targets are set for which pieces of work will be delivered, and when they’ll be delivered

• There’s often a financial modeling and risk analysis exercise that goes along with it

• There’s heated debate and justification of each leader’s pet project to get it onto the work program, and

• It all has to pass the scrutiny of CEO and board approval

Eventually, at the end of this process, resources are allocated (that’s money, people, assets, and time), targets are set and then monitored through all sorts of mechanisms—KPIs, traffic light reports, quarterly performance reviews.

It’s all management, right? Well, not really.

The quality of the plan and the value it can potentially deliver depends almost entirely on how well this process is led.

A strong leader will challenge and test the boundaries of their people during the planning process:

• They’ll ask the hard questions about where the evidence and justification is for ambit claims that people typically make about the benefits of certain activities

• They’ll have the tough conversations that are required to interrogate when and where the value is going to be delivered

• They’ll demonstrate a lack of self-interest, for example, giving up resources when it’s obvious that they’re not needed

• They’ll push back on their upper management when they’re asked to do things that are of marginal value, demonstrating their courage, and their commitment to superior outcomes

• They’ll work in close collaboration with other teams to make sure their key priorities can be supported, and

• They’ll demonstrate empathy for their people by spending time explaining why certain decisions have been made.

A weak leader can’t do this:

• They get completely different outcomes

• They are self-serving

• They are programmed to take the path of least resistance

• They avoid the difficult conversations

• They don’t have the courage to stand up to their upline management.

To me at least, it’s pretty obvious that the success or failure of a task that’s almost purely management-driven (the annual planning process) is entirely dependent on the quality of the leadership that drives it.

Example 2: MANAGING INDIVIDUAL PERFORMANCE

Performance management is a difficult one to define, but it’s not called performance leadership, right!? There’s a clue in that. In my experience though, performance management is much more heavily weighted towards leadership than it is to management.

Let’s think about this… sure, there’s a clear management element here. The first step in performance management is clarity of expectations, and this starts with things like position descriptions, company value statements, and performance standard documents. Establishing these artifacts is predominantly a function of management. But how well this is done is almost entirely dependent on how capable you are as a leader.

Let’s say you’ve used your management processes to clearly define the objectives. The nuance here becomes all about leadership.

• How well can you communicate the objectives?

• How much energy and focus do you put into describing the linkages between purpose, strategy, and the day-to-day objectives?

• Can your people see how their work fits into the big picture?

• Do you inspire them to align with the purpose beyond the deliverables themselves?

• How in tune are you with your people?

• Can you pick up on a mismatch between objectives and expectations quickly?

• How much support do you give your people in the early stages of a task to make sure they’re on the right track?

… and that’s just in the setup of the work program. Once the work is rolling, it gets even trickier.

Do you have a process for inspecting the outputs of key milestones to determine if the work is on track? Well, that’s management.

How interactively do you engage your people to ensure they have problem solving support to keep things moving when they run into issues? That’s leadership.

Just a quick word on the behavioral elements. When you see inappropriate behavior, do you jump on it quickly and reset individual expectations, or do you ignore it? Do you allow people to be insular and combative, or do you insist on collaboration and respect for peers? Do you keep a long-term focus and organization-wide view of value, or do you just try to hit the KPIs so you can make bonus?

When someone isn’t meeting the minimum acceptable standard for performance or behavior, what do you do? Do you rationalize and ignore it? Do you bury yourself in busy work? Do you roll your sleeves up and do it yourself because that’s so much easier than leading someone else to do it? Or do you step into the difficult conversation with the person about what they need to do to meet the mark?

There is a huge amount of leadership in performance management, but there’s also a huge amount of management. In this area, more than any other, it’s almost impossible to draw a distinction between management and leadership.

Example 3: DECISION-MAKING

This is an absolute classic. You probably know that one of the core elements of my No Bullsh!t Leadership framework is, Make Great Decisions. There are so many leadership elements to this. There are also quite a few management elements… and there’s even a larger number of business competency elements.

To make great decisions, you need some sort of process. Okay, management can take care of that. You need data sourcing and analytics… you often need financial modeling and risk analysis… you need structure around consultation and meetings—all good stuff, and essential in the mix of decision-making.

But to make great decisions, you also need a ton of business acumen. Strategy and competitive analysis is often a key part of setting the context for a major decision… experience in the industry you are operating in… macroeconomic analysis and prediction of future demographic trends… market analysis… customer segmentation… scenario modeling and assessment of likely outcomes… analysis and mitigation of key risks… relative assessment of internal resource capability etc.

Great decisions have high quality inputs from the smart people in your business. But you’ll never be able to tap into this unless you can lead your people well: unless you can tap into their expertise; unless you can make them feel comfortable about contributing in group forums; unless you give the expectation of contribution. The outcomes of your decisions are determined much more by the way you lead the process.

WEAK LEADERS SEEK CONSENSUS-BASED DECISIONS

Do you seek consensus because you want everyone to be happy, or do you know that this is going to result in a poor decision?

In the introduction, I alluded to the fact that decision-making by consensus gives you the worst possible outcome. Why? Because in seeking to keep everyone happy, you compromise your way down to the lowest common denominator. It’s a race to the bottom.

When your objective is to keep everyone happy, you accommodate all sorts of input, until you end up with a Frankenstein’s monster of a solution. You arrive at a decision that everyone can live with but no one is happy with. And you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who thinks the decision is the best one that could have been made. Management by committee and decision-making by consensus are the comfort food of weak leaders.

Strong leaders understand the principle of respect before popularity. They know that a good decision-making process relies on a single, accountable decision maker, and they aren’t afraid to back that decision maker in times of disagreement and conflict… without trying to pacify everyone who has an opinion.

Having said that, great leaders set the expectation with the accountable decision maker that they have to consult with the experts who can be additive to the discussion. They understand the principle of speed and momentum, and they don’t allow decisions to get bogged down in endless rounds of soul-destroying meetings. They’re focused on long-term value, holistic solutions, and getting to the root cause of the problem, not short-term, convenient, symptomatic fixes that follow the path of least resistance.

Everything else being equal, I absolutely believe that making great decisions is determined by leadership excellence more than anything else. The best leaders drive great decisions, quickly. And every great leader I’ve ever known is also a great decision maker.

Weak leaders often preside over decision-making anarchy, with unclear accountabilities, lack of structure, and an every-child-gets-a-prize mentality.

Strong leadership, within a well-defined decision-making process, enables you to bring to bear all the business acumen and intellect of your people, and it delivers the optimum outcome.

FORGET SEMANTICS: MANAGE AND LEAD!

When it comes to the debate about management versus leadership, there is no right and wrong: the two go hand-in-hand. One isn’t inherently more noble than the other, and both are essential to get the best outcomes for your organization and your people.

Everyone wants to work for a great leader, but if that leader isn’t also a good manager, you’ll experience the downside impacts pretty quickly. So the next time you see that banal LinkedIn graphic explaining why leaders are good and managers are bad, you’ll know better than to be sucked in by it.

Now that you have this framing in front of mind, have a think about which skills and capabilities you need to develop. There’s plenty of management discipline in my leadership framework because, without strong management skills, we can’t be great leaders.

And this is why, without remorse or apology, I’m happy to use the terms management and leadership interchangeably!