Leaders vs. managers. Patricia Buhler.

Abstract: There are several key differences between leaders and managers. Managers rely on their
legitimate authority in handling subordinates while leaders lead through example. Most managers are good
in encouraging their subordinates to do their jobs effectively while leaders motivate others to excel. Despite
their differences, organizations need both leaders and managers to ensure continued growth.

Full Text: COPYRIGHT National Research Bureau 1995

Leadership is a hot buzzword of the 90s. There is talk of how to cultivate leadership, who demonstrates
leadership ability, what makes a leader, whether leaders are born or made as well as a host of related issues.
As managers, we must take care to recognize that leadership and management are not synonymous.

That is, there are leaders and there are managers. They can be thought of as two separate circles with leaders
in one and managers denoted in the other. These circles, however, intersect. Here in the intersection is that
area of interest to us - that area represented by leaders/managers. That is, those who are both managers and
leaders reside in this intersection. This is not a large intersection because it is a
rare breed of manager that is also a leader. Too often, managers just take it for
granted that the management role elevates them to leader status. Unfortunately,
this is not the case. Likewise, there are leaders who are not managers. There are
many informal leaders in every organization that perform task and relationship
roles that are not formerly designated. There are also those who just naturally
emerge from a group environment as a leader though they have not been
officially designated as such.

So Who Is This Leader?

The leadership needed in organizations today is somewhat different from that required a few
decades ago. As organizations and the environment in which they operate have
changed, so, too have some of those qualities that are necessary in our leaders. It is
important to know who the effective leader is.
Today's leader needs a host of characteristics including an ability to develop a vision,
an ability to articulate that vision, honesty, energy, a thirst for learning and commitment. These qualities all
work hand-in-hand to create the most effective leader today.
Vision is a term that has been bandied about and has numerous meanings. Vision in regards
to the leader refers to visualizing a future state. The leader has a clear picture of what the future looks like.
In addition, there is a clear picture of the pathway to achieve that vision. An example of a visionary leader
was Thomas Watson of IBM. This leader sees beyond what everyone else sees and can see beyond today.
This leader has no boundaries in visualizing what the future holds.
But just as importantly as developing a vision, the most effective leader must also be able to
communicate that vision. Seeing the future state is only half the job. The second half involves ensuring that
others also "see" the vision. This involves an ability to clearly articulate that future state. This is the
mechanism through which others are then able to "buy in". Without an idea of what that future state is,
others cannot help to achieve it. Leaders recognize first and foremost that it is only through the efforts of
others that work is accomplished. In addition, the better the vision is communicated, the greater the
probability that everyone will be on the same wavelength and will be working toward the same vision.
Without a clear communication, people can be buying in to very different visions and even working at odds
with one another unintentionally. Clear articulation ensures more coordinated efforts.
The better leader today is also honest. But this honesty is wide-ranging. That is, this honesty
encompasses all that the leader does. This leader is honest in dealing with others. This includes being fair
with a good sense of right and wrong. It is expanded to ethical behavior as well. In the broadest sense of the
word, these leaders are honest in their views of the world. This may take the form of realism. To paint a less
than realistic picture of the state of affairs puts the leader at a disadvantage - particularly when attempting to
assess a plan of action for achieving the vision for the future.
The astute leader also requires a great deal of energy. Not only must the leader know what it takes to
get the job done, but the leader must physically be able to give it. This usually means working at an
exceptionally high energy level for inordinate periods of time. The excitement of the work and enthusiasm
keep the leader going and able to sustain the necessary high energy level.
Commitment is an essential quality in the effective leader. Commitment helps others to buy in since
it can often be contagious. Few (if any) will gladly follow a leader who lacks commitment. This
commitment must be total. It cannot be a half-hearted effort nor can it be the fad or project of the week. This
commitment, then, must be sincere and all-encompassing. The truly dedicated leader is often perceived as
being consumed or obsessed by the vision or the work at hand.
Finally, the great leader has a thirst for knowledge that drives everything that is done. The "learning
organization" is comprised of numerous individuals with this thirst for knowledge. While the leader is
driven to learn more, there is also a great deal of humility. That is, the astute leader recognizes how much
more there is to learn and that learning is a continuous process with no end. The more effective leaders
believe in life-long learning.
The leader influences people. There are several characteristics needed in the leader to accomplish
this influencing. Above all else, the leader must trust others. This trust builds an environment conducive to
influencing. The leader must also be willing to delegate authority since the leader cannot do everything
alone. The effective leader also encourages risk and dissent. Not only must risk be encouraged, but mistakes
(a natural consequence of risk) cannot be punished. An environment that encourages dissent also is
essential. Finally, the leader must take initiative. The effective leader cannot wait to be told what to do, but
must take the initiative to do what is necessary.

How Managers And Leaders Are Different

Role models are often provided by leaders (vs. managers). They tend to "teach" by example rather
than preaching or dictating. They are imitated throughout the organization in a number of ways because they
are admired. This imitation can take very subtle forms such as dressing like the role model. Mannerisms or
idiosyncratic phrases can also be "copied" in an effort to be more like the role model.
Managers all too often rely on their legitimate power or the authority granted them by very virtue of
their position in the organization. Leaders rely on other sources of power to accomplish their work. They
tend to have power based on their expertise or their charisma.
Managers manage and accomplish work through others. Leaders, however, lead and motivate people
to higher levels, often giving people purpose to what they do. Leaders inspire as well. Managers tend to be
more mechanical.
Managers tend to follow predetermined rules and be somewhat more comfortable with bureaucracy
while leaders are more creative and spontaneous. That can also mean that managers are more reactive and
stay within the organizational boundaries. Leaders push those boundaries and are likely to be more
proactive. The balancing of these two is critical in organizations since there is a need to challenge the status
quo to move forward yet there is also a need to maintain some structure to retain a degree of stability. The
manager/leader combination helps to achieve this balance.
Organizations need both managers and leaders. The task issues are often handled by managers to
simply get the job done. Leaders take this one step further. That category of overlap where managers are
also leaders is sorely needed in every organization.
These are the people who have the legitimate authority and corresponding responsibility in the
organization yet have that added ingredient to move people beyond what is just minimally acceptable. They
inspire people beyond mediocrity. These are the people who visualize the future and are instrumental in
shaping that future by getting others to work with them to accomplish those goals. These are the Steven Jobs
and Thomas Watsons of every organization.
 Managers need to be cognizant of a distinction between managers and leaders. Being a manager does
not automatically imply being a leader. A manager must consciously work to develop leadership
characteristics. Being a manager in today's organizations is not enough. To truly contribute to the
organization, the manager must also be a leader.
Patricia Buhler holds an MBA in management and is owner of Buhler Business Consultants. She is
also employed as an adjunct associate professor at Goldey-Beacom College.

LEADERSHIP TASKS

The main tasks of leaders fall into three distinct categories. Leaders must envision the future, gain
the cooperation of others, and alter the way others think about things.
In law enforcement, leaders must begin by forming an organizational vision and making a
commitment to it. Their passion for excellence and their visions for themselves and their officers greatly test
their abilities as leaders. Committing to a vision also calls on a leader's capacity to take risks--literally, to
suffer change.
After developing a vision for the department, police leaders must gain the cooperation of their
officers to work toward that vision. Effective law enforcement leaders' achieve cooperation through
motivation. President Harry S. Truman said that leadership is "...that quality which can make other men do
what they do not want to do and like it."(1) A leader's officers take pride in every task they perform--from
investigating a major crime to directing traffic in subzero temperatures.
Finally, all employees must have the same values and goals. Therefore, police leaders must develop
high standards and instill these ideals in their staff members.
How do police leaders accomplish these goals? The formula is simple--by knowing their business,
knowing themselves, and knowing their people.(2)

LEADERSHIP VERSUS MANAGEMENT

Many police leaders are effective managers, in that their subordinates produce bottom-line results--
the supervisor whose team has the greatest number of arrests per month, the team leader who logs more
citizen contacts than any other officer, or the division commander who always meets budget. These results
are unquestionably desirable, but leaders with a bottom-line attitude may lose sight of the bigger picture--the
ideals that maintain department cohesiveness during more stressful times.
Furthermore, management that pays undue attention to the bottom line can create tension between
labor and management. To avoid this, law enforcement must encourage its administrators to be leaders, not
managers. Administrators must realize that some day, they will need to lead their people in a critical
situation. Therefore, they must inspire a sense of ownership, pride, and commitment that makes all
subordinates eager to fulfill their duties. Instilling such ideals is the job of a leader, not merely a manager.
When analyzing the dichotomy between leadership and management, management could be simply
termed as "doing the thing right," whereas leadership could be described as "doing the right thing."(4)
Management entails completing the technical, more mechanical, aspects of the every day tasks, while
conforming closely to department policy, procedure, rules, and regulations. Leadership, in sharp contrast,
encompasses the spirit, vision, and ethical considerations that accompany the decision making process.
Leaders find doing the right thing very satisfying. They determine and implement the right course of
action, do what they say they will do, and set standards for themselves that go beyond normal job
requirements. They exercise objectivity to control biases and see persons and events with minimized
prejudice.
In contrast, how often do managers consider the importance of "doing the right thing"? Do they
apply ethical standards to everything they do? These standards must not only apply to tactical, operational,
and policy decision making but must also permeate every organizational decision involving matters of
public policy, personnel, and community interaction.
 Leaders clearly delineate acceptable and unacceptable behavior by rewarding positive behavior and
punishing negative behavior. They recognize their perpetual obligation to the community and the
government not to dismiss borderline behavior. They also realize that this type of behavior, if left
unchecked, will permeate the organization and subtly establish a lower level of acceptable performance as
the norm.
During times of crisis, officers need high principles and ideals to help them rise above seemingly
insurmountable obstacles. They must believe that they serve the community for a noble and just cause. If
law enforcement leaders can impart a sense of duty and a feeling of honor in their subordinates, they will
have a team prepared to meet every challenge.

CONCLUSION

It is impossible to tell how any individual will react in a leadership role, but the quality and intensity
of training in law enforcement today will determine whether future leaders can meet the challenges of
tomorrow. Training that stimulates actual supervision better prepares people to lead.
In the field, leaders must show courage or risk losing the respect of their subordinates. Therefore,
law enforcement must focus on developing leaders, not managers. Leadership development must begin
during recruitment and selection, with each candidate acknowledged as a potential leader who may chart
future courses for the organization, as well as for the law enforcement profession.
Perhaps law enforcement leaders can learn a valuable lesson from a Marine master gunnery sergeant,
who has continuously challenged future naval aviators and officers through the years to seek the blend of
expertise, sense of self, and knowledge of subordinates that characterize effective leadership. This sergeant,
stationed at the U.S. Navy Aviation Officer Candidate School, believes that naval officers can be divided
into two classes--contenders and pretenders. Contenders demand the most from themselves. They grasp the
essence of leadership because they believe in total dedication and complete personal sacrifice. In contrast,
the words "dedication" and "sacrifice" mean nothing to pretenders.(5)
Every day, contenders refine their expertise, challenge their personal ideals, and master new
techniques to motivate their people. Contenders are true leaders, for they reach the high ideals of leadership
and integrate them into the realities of day-to-day existence.
The law enforcement profession cannot afford to fill its leadership ranks with pretenders. It needs
leaders who are contenders. Therefore, law enforcement administrators must ask themselves which they
would rather be--pretenders or contenders? Managers or leaders?

leader manager
• Inspires • Controls
• Thinks • Does
• Motivates • Organises
• Initiates change • Adjusts to change
• Challenges the status quo • Accepts current practice
• Creates • Administers
• Proacts • Reacts
• Sets the pace • Follows procedure
• Drives • Coordinates

• Inspires loyalty • Seeks discipline

The two are related, but their central functions are different. Managers provide leadership, and leaders
perform management functions. But managers don't perform the unique functions of leaders.
Here are some key differences:

• A manager takes care of where you are; a leader takes you to a new place.
• A manager deals with complexity; a leader deals with uncertainty.
• A manager is concerned with finding the facts; a leader makes decisions.
• A manager is concerned with doing things right; a leader is concerned with doing the right things.
• A manager's critical concern is efficiency; a leader focuses on effectiveness.
• A manager creates policies; a leader establishes principles.
• A manager sees and hears what is going on; a leader hears when there is no sound and sees when
there is no light.
• A manager finds answers and solutions; a leader formulates the questions and identifies the
problems.
• A manager looks for similarities between current and previous problems; a leader looks for
differences.
• A manager thinks that a successful solution to a management problem can be used again; a leader
wonders whether the problem in a new environment might require a different solution.
Multiple functions, limited resources and conflicting demands for time and resources, require management.
It involves setting priorities, establishing processes, overseeing the execution of tasks and measuring
progress against expectations. Management is focused on the short term, ensuring that resources are
expended and progress is made within time frames of days, weeks and months. Leadership, which deals
with uncertainty, is focused on the long term. The effects of a policy decision to invest in staff development,
for example, might never be objectively determined or, at best, might only be seen after many years.
Management involves looking at the facts and assessing status, which can be aided by technical
tools, such as spreadsheets, PERT (program evaluation and review technique) charts, and the like.
Leadership involves looking at inadequate or nonexistent information and then making a decision. Leaders
must have the courage to act and the humility to listen. They must be open to new data, but at some point act
with the data available.
Management's concern with efficiency means doing things right to conserve resources. Leadership is
focused on effectiveness - doing the right thing. For example, the military must manage its resources well to
maximize efficiency. But in waging war, the military's critical responsibility is to be effective and win the
war regardless of the resources required. Getting a bargain does not reflect effective leadership if it means
losing the war. Good management is important, but good leadership is essential.
The public sector develops a lot of good managers, but very few leaders. Government focuses too
much on abstract or formal education, rather than experience. The Senior Executive Service has provisions
for mobility and development through experience, but they are rarely used.

Developing Leaders

Management or Leadership.

Management and leadership are both important. Leadership complements management, it doesn't replace it.
You need a solid balance of management and leadership skills to reach your greatest potential. Management
provides the systems, structure and controls your business needs to keep going. In fact, your business would
spin out of control without good management. Leadership is about vision and direction. Thus, while
management and leadership are both important, leadership must come first: you must have a direction
before you can intelligently decide which management systems, structures and controls will best get you
there. Leadership defines what the future will look like, aligns people with that vision and inspires them to
make it happen in spite of obstacles.
If I were to put in a nutshell the major difference between managers and leaders it's this: managers run their
enterprises as though things will always stay the same and leaders run theirs as though everything will
change. Thus, with the accelerating pace of change in the marketplace, leadership is more important than
ever. Great leaders develop leaders at all levels in their organizations to move quickly, seize opportunities,
take risks, empower others to act, change on a dime, communicate more clearly and work towards common
team goals. Managers are adept at maintaining things: keeping them humming along. Leaders change before
they have to, gaining competitive advantage and momentum.

So while management and leadership are both important: management without leadership means you won't
grow what you keep; leadership without management means you won't keep what you grow; leadership is
more relevant in today's new world economy because it works harmoniously with change, assists in moving
more quickly, effectively empowers others to act, casts bold vision, motivates, encourages risk taking and
attacks the status quo. In fact, a major difference between management and leadership can be found in the
status quo: managers are willing to live with it while leaders are not.

One of the challenges for businesses trying to thrive today is that they are filled with managers who came up
through the ranks during decades of "command and control" management styles, where hierarchy was king
and initiative was treated like insubordination. In the old world, individualism was recognized more than
team efforts and cooperation and compliance were sought over collaboration and commitment. The good
news is that leadership can be learned. Leadership is developed, not discovered and managers at any level of
business today can upgrade their leadership skills to balance out their management mind-set and thus
develop themselves, their people and their organization to their fullest potential. Many managers are
successful today and preside over thriving organizations. But the difference between being merely
successful and reaching ones greatest potential is staggering and leadership makes up the difference.

The following points include major differences in how managers and leaders see situations, opportunities
and people. Before one can act like a leader, he must think like a leader. Use these comparisons to broaden
your understanding of how a leader thinks and acts. As you learn more about leadership, you'll develop a
"leadership lens" that allows you to see opportunities, people, performances, problems, situations,
competitors, priorities, change, training and more with a leadership bias. This leadership bias will help you
decide on actions that reflect good leadership, not just management. It's the first step to balancing out your
skill set and becoming more effective as a leader.

1. Managers focus on the weaknesses of people and organizations; leaders focus on strengths. This is
one of the key differences between how a manager and leader thinks and acts. Managers are forever trying
to repair the weaknesses in their people and their companies. The problem with this is you will rarely turn a
weakness into a strength: with a lot of attention, you may bring it up to average or acceptable, but where's
the inspiration in that? When you identify strengths and work to make them better, you become exceptional.
You gain momentum, create confidence and dictate the pace. It takes less energy and time to go from good
to great than it does to go from miserable to mediocre. When you constantly work on weaknesses, you're
always playing "catch up." When developing strengths, you cause competitors to play "catch up." Does this
mean you ignore weaknesses? No. Develop strengths and manage around weaknesses by spending 80% of
your time developing strengths and 20% on weaknesses. Better yet, delegate, outsource and train others to
handle areas of personal and organizational weaknesses so you can focus on what you do best and what
brings you the greatest return. Play to your weaknesses and you play to survive. Play to your strengths and
you play to win, win often, win big and win it all.

2. Managers spend their time charting results; leaders spend their time charting the course.
Managers spend too much time and energy looking at and dwelling on the past to plan the future. In today's
faster market, leaders glance at the past, but look at the horizon to plan the future. By spending more time
looking ahead they gain momentum, develop a dynamic vision and are able to change before they have to.
Managers who contemplate what happened yesterday are good historians but poor leaders. They move too
slow, get blindsided and squander valuable time and energy on irrelevant issues. They become too cautious
and if the past was successful they tend to get stuck there. If you keep looking behind you, that's where your
best days are. If what you did yesterday still looks big today, you haven't done much lately. Learn from the
past, study it for a moment and move on. The future comes fast and you determine your potential by where
you focus. Make sure it's on what's ahead and not on what you left behind.

Managers and Leaders - Comparison of Traits

‘’Credibility is the foundation of leadership’’ p32 for Kouzes and Posner. By this they mean personal
credibility as opposed to technical credibility or competence. The values leader must demonstrate values
that prospective followers admire and which motivate them to trust the leader. Because they are being asked
to undertake a difficult journey, followers need to believe that the leader is the sort of person who
consistently delivers on promises. Conversely, with thought leadership, credibility attaches to the idea or
innovation, not to the person. For example, a thought leader could be otherwise lazy, dishonest and difficult
to get along with – much like the stereotypical creative person. But if he or she can demonstrate the value of
a novel idea – perhaps by a trial product launch, then followers will buy the idea regardless of
what they think of the person – especially if they are opportunists or early adopters of new ideas. For
thought leadership to be effective, therefore, a demonstration, business case or other factual argument could
be all that is required, not a passionate appeal to fundamental human values or needs as in Kouzes and
Posner’s theory. Thought leaders, therefore, do not necessarily need to be personally
inspiring. Thought leadership does not have to be visionary either. Clearly vision or some other

The four preconceptions are as follows: Leadership…

11. is a role, a position in an organizational hierarchy.
22. is a way of enabling groups to achieve shared goals.
33. is a decision making function.
44. is about managing people.
5
61. Leadership as position
Groups naturally form themselves into hierarchies. We like to have a single figure at the top of our
pecking orders to look up to. While we may not be able to rid ourselves of this hardwiring, we can shift our
perception of those at the top and refer to them as executives instead of as leaders. When we regard
leadership as a role or position, the boundary between leadership and management is, at best, fuzzy. They
both seem to have the same function – to improve employee performance. They just have different methods
or styles. The leader is allegedly inspirational while the manager is more methodical, mechanical or
transactional. This distinguishing feature is hardly momentous as it reduces to a mere style difference. The
two styles are not a revolutionary innovation from the very old ideas of initiating structure versus showing
consideration or being people focused versus task focused. The manager is seen as task orientated while the
leader is people orientated. Adding the idea of transformation or inspiration just puts the leader on steroids.
The old ideas of task versus people focus are still the foundation for this distinction and it is little more than
a style difference, hardly a worthwhile basis for distinguishing between leadership and management. We
can avoid this confusion by saying that only management is a role and only management is interested in
motivating employee performance. Leadership, on this view, is about initiating change, not managing
performance. This makes leadership an occasional activity, not a position, role or responsibility.

12. Leadership as enabling the achievement of group goals

The required shift in mindset to counter this preconception is to regard management, not leadership,
as the function that helps a group achieve its goals. Leadership can be limited to initiating new goals. One of
the most popular conceptions of leadership today is the one offered by Kouzes and Posner in The
Leadership Challenge (2002). They make it quite clear that their whole theory is based on the idea that
leadership is about a journey that the leader takes people on. But getting people to a destination, the
implementation of a new direction, can be regarded strictly as a management function. Leadership initiates
or champions change, new directions or new goals. Leadership sells you a ticket for a journey on a bus. The
manager drives the bus to the destination. All performance motivation is therefore a managerial action and
responsibility. Management can be transformational or inspiring – it only differs by virtue of its function.
Transformational managers motivate employees to work harder when implementing a specific goal.
Leadership is simply a matter of challenging the status quo in either word or deed. Leadership stops when
the group buys the idea for change. This move is essential to make sense of the idea that upwards leadership
focuses on getting top management to adopt an unconventional idea. It is then a separate phase to implement
that idea by management. Hence the journey that is central to leadership for Kouzes and Posner is actually a
managerial undertaking.
In an organization that competes on the basis of rapid innovation, the CEO should be what Jim Collins
(2001) has called a ‘’level 5 leader’’. But level 5 leaders could be seen as managers because they facilitate
decision making in others by asking probing questions designed to draw ideas for new strategic directions
out of others rather than champion their own ideas. In highly innovative organizations this sort of
management-as-facilitation is valuable because a great deal of the leadership will be bottom up, shown by
non-managers championing new ideas, much as advocated by Gary Hamel in his book Leading the
Revolution (2000). Such bottom up leadership is completely separate from achieving goals or implementing
decisions. It stops, as does all thought leadership, when the group buys the new idea (the bus ticket). When
top management decides to implement the idea, then it is a management function to manage the change.
This is a description of how leadership can be bottom-up and divorced from the implementation phase
needed to achieve a group goal. But such leadership can be top down as well. But even in this case, when
CEOs show leadership by initiating or championing a new idea, they switch hats from leadership to
management when they move from selling the bus ticket to driving the bus to its destination. This way of
cutting the cake is, however, compatible with the possibility that a CEO might have to do a bit of re-selling
during the destination, throwing in an occasional injection of leadership if and when someone on board
questions the merits of the journey.
By looking closely at leadership outside of the managerial function, as in thought leadership, we can see that
it has nothing to do with implementation. As an example, suppose a team of colleagues are in a meeting. No
one formally reports to anyone else in the room. They are debating whether to change the bonus system for
sales people. A vocal team member is advocating a new system and most of the others seem to be going
along with the idea. But then another team member cites compelling evidence to show why the current
system is preferable and the group is persuaded. Hence the dissenting group member has shown leadership
to the group but the outcome is to preserve the status quo – hence no action is taken, no group goal is
pursued, no journey is launched. This shows that launching a journey is not a necessary condition for
leadership to be shown. Clearly, thought leadership will on occasion launch a massive journey as in, for
example, a new idea for a supersonic passenger plane. The point is that leadership is an impact on a group
that causes them to change their thinking, values, beliefs or attitudes. Implementation is both a separate
phase and a separate function executed by the same or different persons.

13. Leadership as decision making

If both leaders and managers make decisions about what directions to pursue or how to pursue them,
we are again left with a quandary over how they differ. It will not be an easy move to accept, but we could
say that only managers make decisions while leaders stick to informal influence to persuade people to adopt
their ideas. Of course, leaders have to decide which ideas to back but the traditional conception of
leadership revolves around the making of group decisions, not of personal ones. Much of the leadership
style literature was about when to make a unilateral decision for a group and when to make group decisions
participatively. So leadership was seen as a role or position with the responsibility for making major
directional, group decisions. If we challenge this preconception and say that only managers make decisions
then we are claiming that even widely admired, stereotypical leaders such as Jack Welch are actually
wearing managerial hats when they make momentous decisions even when they are quite revolutionary. On
this view, CEOs might show leadership to their senior management teams to persuade them to adopt a new
direction, but as soon as they are on board, a management decision is often made in which case no
leadership is shown to the rest of the organization. A revolutionary idea like being first or second in a
market could, however, show leadership to other organizations, but the bulk of the leading CEOs
organization has experienced the making of a management decision. They have not been shown leadership.
This view might be hard to swallow when talking about CEOs, especially those of Jack Welch’s stature, but
it is the only way to make sense of thought leadership or any form of informal or bottom up leadership. In
such cases, leadership can only be informal influence. When a non-managerial thought leader influences
upwards, decisions for the organization are made by followers at the top of the hierarchy, those in the
organization with the power to make them, not by the thought leaders themselves. So here is a case where
leadership is not a matter of making organizational decisions. Hence the making of such decisions cannot be
an essential feature of leadership. Having the power to make organization-wide decisions implies being a
manager. So whenever a senior executive makes a decision to pursue a new direction, that executive is
wearing a managerial hat, not showing leadership. This idea is likely to be accepted only if we can set aside
the idea that being in charge of a group is what it means to be a leader.

14. Leadership as managing people

The vast literature on leadership styles talks of how best to manage people, how to move them to
work hard, together to achieve joint goals. This idea, of course, is based on the first preconception, that
leadership is a role. But, again, thought leaders do not necessarily manage people and, even if they do,
leading upwards is not about managing your superiors, it is about influencing them to buy your idea. So, we
can conceive of leadership as restricted to influencing people to accept a new idea independently of whether
those people report to the leader or not. Thought leaders can be iconoclasts, eccentrics and have poor
relationship skills, hence not even be capable of managing people. But if they can demonstrate the value of
their ideas, the organization could still be moved to buy their ideas. If thought leadership is not about
managing people, we are not constrained to say that top down leadership is either. Managing people is a
management responsibility. Managers do not have to be mechanical or narrowly controlling. This is to
confuse ends and means. Defining management in terms of its function or end, that is to implement
directions in such a way as to obtain the best return for the investment of all resources encompasses all
aspects of getting the best out of people. The means of doing so are left open and can range from being
controlling to being as empowering as required by the situation.
What is leadership?
Consider these diverse examples of leadership:
1• Top down vision of a better future presented in an inspirational manner – essential when advocating a
shift in values, how the game is played.
2• Top down advocacy in a high tech company of the need to develop a specific new product or market
– not a fundamental change in values, people do not need to be inspired as the business case is fairly
obvious.
3• Bottom up demonstration of a new line of products in an innovative company like 3M takes the
company into new markets. No vision is involved; the new product champions are technical
specialists who are not personally inspiring.
4• A customer service representative in a firm with poor customer service influences the organization to
improve customer service simply by setting a compelling example – again no vision or inspirational
communications.
The first example is conventional leadership, but the other three are not. The second one is still top
down but neither vision nor inspiration is involved. The last two examples are bottom up and are neither
visionary nor communicated in an inspirational manner.
The only common element in these examples is the generation of a new direction. How do they differ? The
aims are broadly the same, but the means of moving people differentiates them, ranging from vision through
a rational presentation of a business case to merely setting an example. What this suggests is that, when
defining leadership and management, we should stop at indicating their relative functions. Instead of talking
about leadership style, we can refer instead to influencing style, a separate process, which has nothing to do
with the essential meaning of leadership.