Are Leadership and management the same?
This is a question I see a lot, and the answer may surprise you. So much on Tik Tok, Facebook and other social media platforms would have you believe their the same when in fact they are different. While leadership and management can go hand in hand, it’s been my experience that most managers in fact don’t lead and most leaders don’t manage. And there’s no shade thrown to either side, it all depends on you. They can go hand in hand but are two sides of the coin.
Leadership isn’t a title, or a boss, or the status in a company, or in life for that matter. Leadership is having the vision to see the strengths and weaknesses in yourself and those in your team and helping to empower your team to strive for the vision. You want your team to take pride in bringing that vision to light and fruition. But wait… I mentioned seeing the strengths and weaknesses in yourself as well as your team. That’s right. True leadership understands while striving for perfection in ones self, it’s the imperfections that bring true empathy, active listening, great communication and true empowerment to the team by recognizing it all starts with the leader.
Leadership that does not guide, empower, train, or assist their staff leads to issues in the workplace. It’s hard to know if your doing a good job when there contradictory info or the person up the food chain from you doesn’t give feed back or communicate effectively. There needs to be balance for the staff.
Now lets talk about the difference between leadership and being a manager. Managing yourself, and your team takes a lot of work as well. A lot of times what I see is what I call the Ogre Management Style, that do as I say, not as I do style of management. Those managers that bark orders, don’t set a good example of how the company culture should be while expecting their staff to rollercoaster with them and just do as told. The unfortunate part is that the working culture in so many places have adopted this style of management leading to a toxic work environment for the staff, poor work culture and just an overall negative and stressful environment to work in. That makes it more difficult to meet goals in any work place and just continues a vicious cycle.
Now that not to be said that there aren’t absolutely great managers out there, I’ve met and worked for many. The unfortunate part is their becoming few and far between. So how do we bring the two together? Leaders that manage and managers that lead do exist and our goal is to help get in alignment whether you’re a staff or you’re a manger/leader. With alignment with yourself you can do either, leadership or management, just understand which you are wanting to do. Balance is achievable with either and both. Visit our website http://www.nanafruitloop.com to learn more. 😊
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