Increasing Employee & Client Engagement

It is Motivational Friday. Hopefully, you do not think manager and leader are interchangeable…  They are almost polar opposites in many ways.

A manager according to Wikipedia is a human organization activity, which simply is the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives.

A definition of Leader more inclusive of followers comes from Alan Keith of Genentech who said “Leadership is ultimately about creating a way for people to contribute to making something extraordinary happen” – like change.

So that says to me that Leaders lead people and managers manage tasks. 

Leadership from Seth Godin’s perspective… Leadership is not management.   Management is a manipulative resource to get a known job done.  It is following a process and reacting to the outside world and managing it as efficient and cost effective as possible.

Leadership is creating change you believe in… Movements have leaders and movements make things happen.  Leaders have followers.  Managers have employees.

Managers make widgets and Leaders make change…  Change is frightening.  Change seems more like a threat than a promise.  That is too bad because the future belongs to our leaders regardless of where they work or what they do. 

This says to me Leadership is at the outer edges and Managers stay in the center where it is known and comfortable…  A Manager’s authority comes from their role and a Leader’s influence comes from their ideas.

You may have heard the phrase, Leaders do the right thing and Managers do things right…