Management is not leadership
Look at your organization and its power structure. It is probably controlled by managers of one stripe or another. They’re in charge, and non-managers in the organization generally do what managers tell them or polish up their resumes.
But managers aren’t necessarily leaders. The terms leader and leadership are often used interchangeably with manager and management. This is pretty common, and pretty commonly inaccurate. It certainly is desirable to have your managers be leaders, but management and leadership are not the same thing. Sadly, it is all too often the case that managers are not leaders.
The difference between managing people and leading people is a question of motivation. People follow leaders; they move of their own free will in the general direction that the leader has set out for them.
Too many managers don’t lead people anywhere, they push them. In fact you’ll often hear managers say that they have to “stay on the staff” to get anything done. A manager who is in charge but not leading is pushing, and pushing is a miserable way to get things done. In fact, it’s what makes management something to be dreaded. Pushers must constantly apply energy, time, and resources to herding an uncooperative, unmotivated workforce toward the organization’s goals.
A leader, by contrast, applies a lot of energy at the beginning when she or he communicates a vision, articulates goals, and creates a team environment where everyone feels a part of what’s being done and wants to succeed not just for the organization, but for himself or herself. The successful leader then applies a little energy periodically along the way to check the pulse of the project and make sure everyone is on track toward the vision and goal.
An organization with pushers may still achieve its goals, but usually it will fall short. The reason is simple: as a pusher, you cannot make people care; you can only make them comply. Caring about something is a voluntary action that comes from the inside of what makes people, well, people. Put more practically, you can usually only hope for 70% by the whip. To get 110%, you have to have the heart.
