Managers manage.
Leaders lead.
Are these roles so different?
A manager is charged to manage their resources against a budget. Does this allow a manager to maximizing their talent, to cultivate creativity in their team, or to take risks? The manager needs to deliver to their budget and align their resources to successfully enable their team’s role to perform against the plan.
Leaders shape a vision. Leaders look beyond the horizon for opportunity and threats, they calculate risk, and communicate goals. Leaders are responsible for results against their vision. That makes communication and motivation a primary skill for leaders. Leaders make change, but look towards their team to execute tactically.
Very simply, managing resources may compete with the ability to develop and communicate a vision. The skills for management may be entirely different for the skills needed for leaders. Perhaps one set of skills would fail in the other’s role; the identification and acknowledgment of this may be a large part of managing (in the true sense) expectations.
I feel cultivating success in either role is more important than expecting a manager to also dual-hat as a leader. Both are very difficult roles.
