The Difference Between Leading and Managing

Why You Need to Do Both

There’s a lot of noise out there about how you should stop managing and start leading in order to be successful.

Big misconception. No matter what role you hold in your work, you are always going to need both skillsets.

Managing means facilitating process and/or entities to accomplish a goal. And leading, according to the dictionary, is to “go before, show the way; influence, inspire.”

Here are some differences between leading and managing:

If you are in charge of an area of responsibility, you need to know how to lead – and how to manage.

Here’s an easy way to think about it:  Lead people, manage work.

It’s tough to survive without the ability to wear these two hats. In an age of the flattened organizational model, with more shared responsibility and less authority, influence and inspiration rule supreme in order to bring team and other stakeholders along…and we still need to tend to our personal piece of the work pie to reach goals.

How does this play out in your work?