Leadership vs. Management: An Accurate But Dangerous Distinction?

As my recent blog posts suggests, I've been reading a lot about leadership lately.  The last time I reviewed that literature was about four years ago when Jeff Pfeffer and I were writing Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense.  It is impossible to read it all.  Tens of thousands of books have been written on the subject and there are several academic journals devoted entirely to the subject, including The Leadership Quarterly and The Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies.  Perhaps the most definitive review and integration of the leadership literature was Bass and Stogdill's 1200 page Handbook of Leadership, which was published in 1990 (and still does the best job of making sense of the literature, for my money). But if you really want a long book on leadership, you can get the four volume Encyclopedia of Leadership, which is 2120 pages long, weighs about 15 pounds, and costs a whopping $640 on Amazon!  So the task of reviewing the leadership literature -- and acting on it as leader -- isn't to understand it all (that is impossible), but to develop a point of view on a few themes that matter most.

As I have been reading these writings and research again, I have been bumping into an old and popular distinction that has always bugged me: leading versus managing. The brilliant and charming Warren Bennis has likely done more to popularize this distinction. He wrote in Learning to Lead: A Workbook on Becoming a Leader that  "There is a profound difference between management and leadership, and both are important. To manage means to bring about, to accomplish, to have charge of or responsibility for, to conduct. Leading is influencing, guiding in a direction, course, action, opinion. The distinction is crucial". And in one his most famous lines, he added,  "Managers are people who do things right and leaders are people who do the right thing."

As I have been reading the leadership literature again, it is becoming more clear to me that -- although I think this distinction is more or less correct, and is useful to a degree (one emphasizes the focusing on the bigger picture and the other on the details of implementation), I also think that it has unintended negative effects on how some leaders view and do their work.  Some leaders see their job as just coming up with big and vague ideas, and treat engaging in conversation about the details of those ideas or the details of implementation as mere management work that is "beneath" them, as things for "the little people to do."  Moreover, this distinction also seems to be used a reason for leaders to avoid the hard work of learning about the technologies their companies use and the people that they lead and to make decisions without considering the roadblocks and constraints that affect the cost and time line, and even if it is possible to implement their grand decisions and big ideas. 

 I am all for dreaming, and some of the most unlikely and impressive things have been done by dreamers.  But one characteristic of the successful dreamers I think of -- Francis Ford Coppola, Steve Jobs, folks at Pixar like Ed Catmull and Brad Bird -- is that they also have remarkably deep understanding of the industry they work in and the people they lead, and they often are willing to get very deep into the weeds. This ability to go back and forth between the little details and the big picture is also evident in the behavior of some of the leaders I admire most who aren't usually thought of as dreamers. Anne Mulcahy's efforts to turnaround Xerox were successful in part because she already had such detailed knowledge of the company, and she was very detailed oriented during the crucial early years of her leadership.  I also think of Bill George, one of Jim Collins' level 5 leaders, who told me that, when he was brought in as CEO of Medtronic (a medical device company), he spent about 75% of his time during his first 9 months on the job watching surgeons put Medtronic devices in patients and talking with doctors and nurses, patients, families, and hospital executives to learn about customers and users of his products. 

I am all for grand visions and strategies.  But the people who seem to make them come true usually seem to have deep understanding of the little details required to make them work -- or if they don't, they have the wisdom to surround themselves with people who can offset their weaknesses and who have the courage to argue with them when there is no clear path between their dreams and reality.  I guess this is one of the themes that I have written about before, especially in The Knowing-Doing Gap (with Jeff Pfeffer).  But it is bothering me more lately, as I've had some conversations with project managers who have been assigned tasks by naive and overconfident leaders -- things like implementing IT systems and building software. And when they couldn't succeed because of absurd deadlines, tiny staffs, small budgets, and in some cases, because it simply wasn't technically possible to do what the leaders wanted, they were blamed.  Such sad tales further reinforce my view that talking about what people ought to do and telling them to do it is a lot easier than actually getting it done.

I am not much rejecting the distinction between leadership and management, but I am saying that the best leaders do something that might be most properly called a mix of leadership and management (a great example is HP CEO Mark Hurd) , or at least, lead in a way that constantly takes into account the importance of management.   And some of the worst senior executives use the distinction between leadership and management as an excuse to avoid learning the details they need to understand the big picture and to select the right strategies. 

In Bennis speak, I guess I am saying: To do the right thing, a leader needs to understand what it takes to do things right."

Comments

[Alan]

Thank you it is great to such great original content, I really enjoyed reading your info and will be back to view further posts. Leadership is crucial to the success of both personal and business development

[Nathan]

In my experience the term leader has a positive connotation and manager has a negative one. The reasons for these perceptions are legion, usually due to people's personal experiences and eventually lore.

One position I held reinforced that, and held up leaders as the people that were needed to make the company successful. Problem was, they were just words not backed up with real substance and action.

For me, manager is a word that automatically makes me cringe. It shouldn't. People need to manage, whether it is themselves or others. People also will need to lead in varying degrees as well. So I agree with what Bob and others have said.

It's complex, and these definitions are perhaps best illustrated by example.

[Tiffany]

Great article Bob! I agree with everything you say because I have had experiences with leaders that have visions that are not agreeable with business objectives, yet really don't understand why they can't be carried out or why it wouldn't work as well as they planned.

I have been researching about leaders and managers too and I have always felt that there really is no distinction. A great leader motivates, engages, collaborates and brainstorms with all angles. A great manager does the same and is not afraid to contribute to the leaders thoughts as well as protect their workers from things they know won't work.

[ritu venkatesh rangachari]

Hello Bob, we wrote recently on great brands and great leaders..and concluded that they are fundamentally the same and do 3 key things to ensure loyal followers (consumers):
Engage- Educate- Entertain.
The "Engage" for a leader comes from his understanding of the future and defining how his company/ team should relate to the future. This is a gap analysis that brand managers cover through market research..but for leaders it happens by exposing him(her)self to the environment and to the capabilities of his company.

The "educate" happens as leaders define HOW their company will change itself for a better future. This requires the leader being operationally sound. we believe no leader can escape getting into the trenches REGULARLY.

Lay-offs are common when the leader has either poorly defined the future or underestimated the resources at his disposal to get to that future.

Market leading brands "educate" by bringing in new technologies and innovations.

And "entertain" is the aspect of leadership where he shares his story of the futre and how to get there. He can do this in different ways. And the best way is the way that works for his company.(or market)

thank you
ritu venkatesh rangachari
LOGOTHOUGHTS

[Bruce Lynn]

While I love the Bennis quote about 'doing the right things...', beyond that I disagree with Bennis' categorisation of 'Management' as a somehow inferior form of Leadership.

I like the notion of a 'Leader/Manager' distinction because it creates a model requiring balance which I think is fundamental in business life. Specifically, my blog (3 years of blogging on the particular topic) puts forward the notion that the disnction revolved around how executives approach risk. 'Leaders optimise upside and Managers minimise downside.' Both are critical to an effective organisation.

[Michael Maccoby]

Bob- Your point about successful business visionaries having deep knowledge about their products fits my experience. However, I think we should differentiate leadership which always involves a relationship as contrasted with management which has to do with processes and systems. Yes, leaders should understand management. However, management doesn't always need a manager. I have worked with factories where management is done by teams. Furthermore, you find different kinds of leaders in knowledge organizations today-- strategic, operational, networking--and they have different styles and qualities. We should no longer be thinking about the leader, but rather an effective interactive leadership system that includes strategy, implementation and facilitation. This can't be achieved by management alone at a time of constant change when people need inspiration, a sense of purpose and enthusiasm to achieve their goals.

[Wally Bock]

Marvelous post, Bob. The management/leadership dichotomy creates problems in four ways.

First, it distinguishes leaders from managers when a more accurate distinction is between leadership work and management work. Every person responsible for group performance must do both. You don't get to lead and not manage or manage but not lead.

Second making leaders superior to managers, as in, "We need more leaders and fewer managers" gets us into the trait business. We describe the ten or eleven or twelve or three dozen traits of great leaders. Those descriptions are manifestly unhelpful because they include traits like "honesty" as if it were an inborn characteristic instead of the emergent characteristic of a success of situations and acts.

Third, the dichotomy leaves out supervision which everyone with responsibility for group performance needs to do along with leadership work and management work.

Fourth, the leadership/management dichotomy leads us to discuss the distinction endlessly rather than defining what behavior and performance we expect from the men and women who are responsible for teams in our organizations.

[Martin Schray]

Bob,

Great post and really spot on. This also potentially explains why strategy to execution breaks down in so many cases.

Martin

[Frederic Lucas-Conwell]

Bennis distinction was useful at a time a new style of leadership was needed in USA. This distinction is not useful anymore. There exist sa true difference in what the word ‘management’ means in the reading from Bennis, and let’s say Drucker. The Bennis‘ manager style still works quite well to lead in many situations. And a good mix of styles often helps.
But it seems your post takes the discussion into finding a silver bullet for leadership. Doesn’t the situation matter? What about being properly educated to reading people’s emotions/behaviors, have a positive attitudes to people who are different from who we are? MBA programs don’t teach that, do they? How is it that so many exec. coaches are today needed to help managers or leaders do their job?

[Andrew Meyer]

Bob,

I deeply respect your writing so please take my question with a grain of salt. When you talk about looking at distinctions between great leaders and great managers and what makes them effective, are you looking at what they do or are you looking at whether their companies performed well? (or more specifically are performing well now?)

My concern comes from when you say "the people who seem to make them come true usually seem to have deep understanding of the little details required to make them work..."

It seems to me that there's a survivorship and success bias at play. Especially with the examples you gave. You're looking people/companies that are successful now. Right now, Apple has the Midas touch and Steve Jobs is on your list. If you were doing this in the '90s, when Jobs was at struggling NeXT, would he have made the list? Would the list then not have included John Chambers from Cisco?

My point is not to question Jobs or Chambers' leaderships skills or deep understanding of the details or their companies management abilities, but rather the choice of examples and timeframes.

My friends who know military history tell me Napoleon showed his most brilliant abilities as a General while losing at Waterloo. Roger Federer showed his tactical brilliance, grit and creativity in his loss to Rafael Nadal at Wimbledon.

My point is only that the most brilliant leadership and management often takes place in the face of insurmountable odds.

I love your writings and really hope you publish something along these lines. I just hope you don't fall into the easy trap of only talking about leaders with deep knowledge and grand visions only looking at companies deemed successful. Success is a measure of relative performance at a particular time. Please include some examples of great leadership, deep knowledge and wonderful management in firms that are not necessarily wildly successful at that present time.

[Stefan Stern]

Well said Bob, I am completely with you on this. I regret that "management" seems to have become "the m word" for so many people, when clearly what we are talking about are the hundreds of (admittedly) micro-level decisions and actions that ultimately affect billions of people's lives. How many leaders declare that there is nothing wrong with their marvelous vision, it was just the execution - carried out by minions - that has let them down. But these leaders, as you put it, don't really understand what it takes to do things right.
Henry Mintzberg talks about "management by deeming" - those leaders who simply announce things and presume that they will happen - our Tony Blair was like that, whatever the US media may have told you about him!
Thanks for the commentary. We have started a management blog (note the name!) on FT.com

http://blogs.ft.com/management/

and hope other readers will take a look.

[Jan]

A good post. I agree with most things said. Of course it's not enough to have a vision for your business, you need deep understanding as well. This is what sets successful leaders apart from not so successful ones. Or as Steve Jobs said in his latest interview: "I have learned to manage the top line – the strategies, the people, the products – and the bottom line will follow." When you get a glimpse into his thinking, it's quite revealing how focused he is on details and at the same time can make really smart conclusions about a business and its strategy.

When it comes to Anne Mulcahy's successful turning of Xerox, I think a lot has to do with the kind of person she is, how she listened to people in her own organisation. But she had a vision too, which helped her and the people around her to focus on what was important.

[Jeff]

Thanks for this post. It's great. I was familiar with Bennis's ideas but something never quite felt whole them. There can't be just someone on high guiding strategy without understanding. You stated the balance very nicely.

[Kevin Rutkowski]

Based on the earlier post, a leader may just be anyone with followers. Most managers have followers by default. If we use the previous definition of a leader, I think that this post gets more into the leadership style. Is the leader a visionary or detail oriented? As you pointed out, the best leaders have some of both styles.

I have worked with people in leadership positions who set arbitrary project deadlines without understanding anything about the details behind the project. In one case, when a qualified and experienced project manager brought up legitimate concerns, she was told to stop being negative. She wasn't the type to be bullied into silence, so the "leader" replaced her. Of course, the project encountered most of the problems that the PM identified. These problems could have been mitigated if the "leader" had listened to his highly qualified and competent staff.

I think it's also important to distinguish between leaders who have followers solely due to their position and leaders who have followers at least partly due to their leadership skills.

[Sandy Piderit]

Bob, I agree that "the best leaders do something that might be most properly called a mix of leadership and management". I also believe that teaching about the distinction between leadership and management can sometimes have negative effects on students, because they sometimes use the distinction as a way to back away from the leadership aspects of their primarily managerial jobs.

Leadership is not something we can count on others to do -- sometimes we have to step out to the front of the line and lead, even when we are not in charge.

-Sandy