Leadership and Management are 180 degrees apart!

"There is too much emphasis today on leadership; what we need today is management." - Peter Drucker

A few days ago, I came across this interview by Peter Drucker and his comment got me thinking... like most people I already knew what the difference is between a leader and manager; but never the less I thought "leadership" and "management" to be interchangeable.

Over my last 16 years of professional engagement as an engineer, team leader, manager, and senior leadership; I have come to understand that there are a few; let me rephrase very, very few people; who are good at both leading and managing people. The two skills as I have come to know are..... Wildly different and even in a certain sense opposite or 180 degrees apart!

Leadership is about inspiring people, motivating them, and getting them to do more than they ever thought possible.

Management is about delimiting responsibilities, measuring results and taking remedial action.

Put another way, leadership is all "upward and onward" while management is all "carrot and stick."

In my experience, few entrepreneurs (or people in general) are good at both. It's difficult to simultaneously inspire people to greatness when, at some point, you'll eventually be giving them an annual review that might involve a small percentage of raise. The two situations cancel each other out.

Many organizations make a clear distinction between leadership and management. The U.K. government, for example, has a monarch who provides leadership and a Prime Minister who provides management. By contrast, the U.S. government expects the President to provide both, which some do much better than others.

The most effective engineering organization I ever encountered split management and leadership into separate functions. A chief architect had the vision of where the software needed to go and motivates people to achieve that vision. The engineers, however, reported to a manager chain, who handled salaries and administration.

By contrast, I've seen many organizations headed by 1) brilliant engineers who are indifferent (or even abysmal) managers and 2) brilliant managers who are horrible leaders, in that they understand numbers and basic psychology but lack the vision, scope, and technical expertise to motivate and inspire a team.

CEOs who aren't good managers do dumb things like yell at people when they don't immediately "get" whatever the leader is saying. To be effective, such CEOs need a level-headed Chief Operating Officer who cleans up the inevitable messes. Steve Jobs and Tim Cook were an excellent example of this kind of highly productive partnership.

Similarly, CEOs who aren't good leaders do dumb things like stick creatives in open-plan offices because it saves on office space rental. To be effective, such CEOs need a Chief Engineering Officer who has the vision to guide the company into the future and bring everyone else along for the ride. 

Most startups can't afford to split these two roles and often the founder must somehow provide both leadership and management. That being said, it's no accident that so many highly successful companies were founded by two, rather than one, individual. Examples here would be Bill Gates/Paul Allen, and Larry Page/Sergey Brin.

With this in mind, entrepreneurs should be honest with themselves about their natural talents and proclivities. Unless you're one of those unicorns who have both in equal measure, you should either find a co-founder who fills in your gaps or at least plan to hire somebody to fill in your gaps.

The author is a serial project management and new product development leader; he has a passion for coach teams during their transition to an agile way of doing things. Hassan regularly writes and participates in leadership and management events.