What It Takes to Turn Managers Into Leaders
Not all managers are good leaders. Learn to blend management and leadership in the right proportions, and spot which of the four patterns you fall into.
Not all managers are good leaders. Not all leaders are good managers. As disciplines, leadership and management complement and yet compete with each other. The roles are interdependent but not interchangeable. They represent different roles, but not different people. You have to blend them in the right proportions based on need and circumstance.
How do you turn a manager into a leader?
Take a look at the list below. Which role and style do you naturally gravitate toward?
| Management | Leadership |
|---|---|
| Sustain | Catalyze |
| Duplicate | Create |
| Today | Tomorrow |
| Plans | Vision |
| Tactical | Strategic |
| Executing goals | Defining goals |
| Short-term | Long-term |
| Facts | Possibilities |
| Scripted | Unscripted |
| Preserving | Disturbing |
| Equilibrium | Disequilibrium |
| Lower-risk | Higher-risk |
| Answers | Questions |
| Things | People |
| Heads | Hearts |
| Control | Influence |
| Instruction | Inspiration |
| Mechanics | Meaning |
| Compliance | Commitment |
| Content | Context |
The delicate dance between processes and outcomes
If you’re responsible for a team in your organization, there should be moments of leadership in every workday, and there should be moments of management in every workday. The difficulty is knowing when to apply the appropriate approach. When should you sustain the status quo, and when should you catalyze change? When does the focus need to be on today? When can you shift to tomorrow? When does a team member need guidance? When can you grant them autonomy?
A useful way to hold the two roles side by side: management says “I’m accountable for keeping our processes moving,” while leadership says “I’m accountable for every outcome my team creates.”
If you’re a good-natured and effective leader, you may make these choices intuitively. One distinction sheds light on the interplay between leadership and management, and how you can use both skillsets:
- Management increases accountability, which produces predictable execution.
- Leadership improves relationships, which produces consistent innovation.
The full guide keeps going from here: why transferring ownership to the individuals on your team eventually lands on predictable execution, why consistent innovation depends on moving beyond the mechanics and into the relationships you build with your team members, and the four leadership patterns — Buddy, Empowering Leader, Absentee Landlord, and Micro-Manager — mapped across relationship and accountability so you can find the box you currently fall into.
Ready to bring it to your team? Talk with us →