This point is so important we’ve made it twice (via Drucker and Hopper, of course) – management and leadership are not the same thing. This week’s featured quotes from our top 15 are:
“Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.” – Peter F. Drucker
“You manage things; you lead people.” – Grace Murray Hopper
So, how do you tell which is which? Are you a leader? A manager? Both? What does it all mean?!
Luckily, Discovery Performance have prepared a handy cheat-sheet to help you tell the difference between the two roles:
|
Leadership |
Management |
|
Visionary |
Transactionary |
|
Focused on people |
Focused on processes/things |
|
Encouraging and developing others |
Telling others what to do |
|
Emphasis on the bigger picture |
Emphasis on the day-to-day functions |
|
Flexible, adaptable, agile |
Rigid, rule-following |
|
Defined by attitude and behaviour |
Defined by workplace hierarchy |
Of course, any short description of the differences between leadership and management has to include generalisations – not all managers are rigid rule-followers, after all – but this leads us to the heart of the leader vs. manager debate.
Both are essential to business success, but there is one crucial difference: not all leaders are managers, but all managers should be good leaders. This distinction is the reason that all of our leadership training is aimed at developing what we call the ‘leader-manager’; a manager who shows strong leadership skills as well as day-to-day efficiency and competency. We believe that this is the best way to create sustainable leadership development to help you achieve your business goals.
Written by Florence Sturt-Hammond
Copyright © 2025 Discovery ADR. All rights reserved.
