Differences between leader and manager
As for "leader" and "manager", most people have three views as below:
But in reality, all the three views are biased
First, there are big differences between a leader and a manager
Management, a means of providing efficiency, focuses on process, cares about practical problem solving, and focuses on maximizing the efficiency of people inside the system. Through planning, organizing, staffing, motivating, evaluating, ordering, and resource mobilization, thus achieving in a useful and efficient way.
Leadership, on the other hand, is more of a spiritual influence, through vision, mission, strategy, talent development, action authorization, organizational revolution, etc., calling people to follow spontaneously to achieve the common goals of the organization and individuals.
From this point of view, we can simply understand that leaders focus on doing the right things, and managers focus on doing things right; leaders focus on strategy, and managers focus on tactics; leaders focus on revolution, and managers focus on execution; leaders focus on the future, and managers focus on the present.
For example: If you are a company that produces matches. The manager's responsibility is how to develop the market for customers, reduce the cost of matches, enhance the performance of matches, improve productivity, and reduce additional losses; while the leader's function is to tell everyone: Guys, matches have been eliminated by the times, we should now produce lighters.
Secondly, Owner is not necessarily a leader and manager, and a leader is not necessarily to be the boss. Owner only represents capital control, but many owners will be leaders or managers at the same time
Thirdly, leadership and personal charm really have little to do with each other. Of course, people with higher personal charm are more likely to form leadership, but that doesn't mean that people without personal charm can't become leaders. Leadership is determined by one's actions, not personal charms.
In short. In an organization, the leader is the one who pictures dreams, while the manager is the one who applies technical means to achieve them. From this perspective, entrepreneurs should be more of a Professional type of person, even if they need to be involved in management work at certain stages of development, remember that this is just a transition.
Learning the specific differences between the two will help us to position ourselves and plan our work accurately. If you've just been pointed into a 20-person team as a sales director, how do you "conquer" the original team members? Apply leadership or management skills?
In John Maxwell's book--The 5 Levels of Leadership, there are five levels of leadership: Position, Permission, Production, People development, and Pinnacle.
Position, people follow you because of your corporate position and power, so they have to listen to you unless they change organizations. Then once you leave the position, the leadership is naturally gone.
Permission, people follow you because they identify with you, so they are willing to listen to you, even if you don't stay in the position one day in the future.
Production, means that you can lead people to win battles consistently. People follow you because of the contribution you make to the organization. In fact, this is the most direct form of leadership that solves most problems.
People development means that you can invest your abilities and resources in others and nurture their growth, that is, "replicate yourself". People follow you because of what you give to them.
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Pinnacle, we can understand as the "personal brand", people follow you purely because of who you are, or what you represent.
These 5 levels, layer accumulates.
So, for an organization, do people think it's important to be a leader or a manager?
At different stages of the organization, there would be different focus.
In newly established stage, manage is not neccessily, emphasis of efficiency need to be from outside rather than inside, it is better to set a good goal that everyone agrees on, and then collectively move forward, rather than various regulation, frame or process. In this stage, leadership is the most improtant.
In the organizational maturity stage, the external efficiency has been a stable stage, such as the market has been saturated, the supplier costs can hardly be reduced, at this time if you want to improve can only rely on the power of management, for internal efficiency. As for leaders, they start to gain insight into the future and the next shape of the organization.
In the aging stage of the organization, whether external or internal, has lost the space to improve efficiency, at this time the most important thing is for the leader to come forward to propose revolution. As for the managers, need to prepare for stability after the change.
In short, leadership and management are different. Only by being aware of this, you can avoid that when you should talk about leadership (especially in the start-up and aging stages), you end up putting all your efforts into management, causing "over-management".