From Management to Leadership:
A new perspective

When leadership positions come open in an organization, the natural progression is for those who have excelled in managerial/supervisory positions to be promoted. It doesn't take long, however, for the individuals involved, and employees left in their wake, to realize that the skills that made them excel as managers may not be the same set of skills required for success as leaders.

Let's take a look at the difference between managers and leaders, and the skill set required within each arena:

Managers

• Monitor people
• Manage the present
• Enforce the rules
• Sustain organizational performance
• Exercise power over
• Are given employees
• Give people instructions
• Do things right
• Try to fit the mold
• Are problem solvers
• Delegate responsibility
• Help people conform to the system
• Bargain
• React to change
• See training as a luxury

Leaders

• Inspire people
• Focus on the future
• Promote company values
• Improve organizational performance
• Exercise power with
• Earn followers
• Tell people why
• Do the right things
• Try to create their own mold
• Teach others to solve their own problems
• Delegate authority
• Change the system to conform to people
• Negotiate
• Create change
• Know training is a necessity

Realizing these differences, the challenge for individuals involved then becomes making the transition required to view the world from this new perspective. Making the conscious realization that the skill sets and responsibilities of managers and leaders are different is, however, the first major step in beginning that journey.

- Jackie Rasmussen, business specialist, MO SBTDC. For Creating Quality Newsletter, May 2002. Revised 2/21/08.