November 2013 Newsletter - Leadership & Management

Much has been written about the difference between leaders and managers.

"Leaders are people who do the right thing," note leadership experts Warren Bennis and Joan Goldsmith in Learning to Lead: A Workbook on Becoming a Leader (Basic Books, 2003). "Managers are people who do things right."

As they further explain: "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."

While this distinction is correct, it has unintended negative effects. Some leaders now believe their job is about coming up with big ideas. They dismiss executing these ideas, engaging in conversation and planning the details as mere "management" work.

Worse still, many leaders cite this distinction as the reason why they're entitled to avoid the hard work of learning about the people they lead, the processes their companies use and the customers they serve.

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