Leading vs Managing – which one is more important?
Leading vs managing – which one is more important?
Leadership and management are critical to enabling your team’s best work. But one is often celebrated while the other is minimized, or even belittled. At some point, you've probably heard a statement similar to this: “You don’t want to be a manager – you want to be a leader!” and blah blah blah.
I'm here to tell you that type of thinking is fundamentally flawed. Regardless of your role, odds are, both a management mindset AND a leadership mindset are required to enable your team’s best work. It’s not one vs. the other. It’s finding the right mix of both. What we really want is what I often refer to as "Lanagement" or "Manageship" or maybe "Leaderment."
Yet leadership still gets all the love. I’ve seen many organizations fail to reach their potential – and even experience major losses – due to lack of management, not lack of leadership. Both are important and both are required at every level of the organization to achieve the best results. The sooner you acknowledge this, the better for your business or mission. When you focus on only one, you have a blindspot – and a big vulnerability.
Consider this: John Ray III - who took over the cryptocurrency exchange FTX after Sam Bankman-Fried was ousted - has said that the lack of basic management at FTX was stunning to him. Mr. Ray has had a long career sorting out failed companies. For someone with his experience to express such amazement and shock was telling.
What are some examples of leadership behaviors? Setting and communicating a shared vision for the organization. Scanning and adjusting to events in the external market or landscape. Role modeling the way forward. Meanwhile, management can include resource allocation, planning, setting policy, defining process and providing day-to-day support of staff as they execute on their jobs.
The specific mix of management and leadership depends on your job role and context. Just don’t fall into the trap of thinking that one matters more than the other. Leadership is needed at all levels as is management. Today's Hot Take: recognize and embrace the need for both.
The first episode of my new podcast Lead Up (co-hosted with my colleague and former Intel Corporate VP Rose Schooler) explores this topic in depth. Check it out on the podcast tab of this website.
