In one sen­tence, how would you define “Lead­er­ship?” How about “Man­age­ment?” Are you crys­tal clear on the dif­fer­ence between the two?

Any­one who is respon­si­ble for get­ting results through oth­ers needs to be able to effec­tively prac­tice both Lead­er­ship and Man­age­ment. Unfor­tu­nately, many man­agers use these terms interchangeably.

Man­age­ment is the act of over­see­ing and influ­enc­ing peo­ple, assets, and processes to achieve pre­de­ter­mined results. You are a Man­ager based on the author­ity assigned to your position.

Lead­er­ship is the act of engag­ing the heads and hearts of peo­ple in ways that inspire them to give their best in order to achieve a com­mon goal – a goal that, quite often, only the Leader can clearly see. Any­one — from the front desk to the cor­ner office — can be a Leader.

To put it another way, Man­age­ment is more of a “head” thing, whereas Lead­er­ship is more of a “heart” thing. Both are crit­i­cally important!

The chal­lenge I see many man­agers strug­gling with today is that they are not lead­ing those on their teams. They are not tap­ping into their team­mates’ full poten­tial and, as a result, they are not accom­plish­ing what is possible.

They are man­ag­ing their peo­ple as if they were fixed assets or equip­ment, and they are los­ing the hearts of their most appre­cia­ble asset.

Lead­er­ship starts with Vision. If you do not have your busi­ness vision clearly writ­ten, and if you are not repeat­ing it and repeat­ing it and repeat­ing it, then chances are you are man­ag­ing from the head. Your team also needs you to lead from the heart.

Extra­or­di­nary com­pa­nies, cul­tures, prod­ucts, and ser­vices are born from both strong man­age­ment and heart­felt leadership.

Man­age and Lead!

Related posts:

1. Lead­er­ship Moment: You Need Vision to Plan
2. 11 Tips for Inten­tional Liv­ing and Lead­ing in Uncer­tain Times
3. You Need a Road Map (Increas­ing Your Lead­er­ship Capac­ity Series — Step 5 of 8)
4. Lead­er­ship Wis­dom From a Beaver
5. Lead­er­ship and Personhood

Tags: Heart, Leadership, Management, Vision

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 4th, 2010 at 7:21 am and is filed under Leadership. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.