Leaders vs. Managers: Understanding Roles and Differences

The difference between leaders vs. managers is sometimes explained in pithy statements like leaders are about the people; managers are about the business. But so much is demanded of managers today that many rely on highly developed leadership skills to achieve demanding goals.

So, is a manager also a leader? Sometimes. But a leader is not a manager.

Yes, this can be confusing. So here’s how to tell the difference between a leader and a manager, with a real-world example of how one leader got “superhuman amounts of work” from his engineering team, without burning them out.

Knowing the difference between managing vs. leading can help you discern which one you are, and which skills you may want to develop to gain more fulfillment from work.

Defining a leader

Leaders focus on bringing the best out of people. They’re skilled at communicating their vision and then motivating people to work toward achieving it. They create environments that encourage higher levels of creativity and performance.

Read: 5 Characteristics of a Dynamic Leader in a Remote Workforce

Some signs you’re a leader are that your team regularly goes to you with ideas and is inspired to do their best work. You prioritize making time to listen to and mentor individuals because you’re genuinely interested in their well-being. You’re more concerned about their success than yours, and you do what you can to help them reach their potential.

Vineet Nayar, author of “Employees First, Customers Second,” defines leaders as people who create circles of influence. In a Harvard Business Review (HBR) article, Nayar offered this quick tip: “Count the number of people outside your reporting hierarchy who come to you for advice. The more that do, the more likely it is that you are perceived to be a leader.”

Defining a manager

A manager focuses on the tasks required to accomplish a goal. They’re skilled at allocating resources, managing budgets, and assigning tasks. They create environments where direct reports have established processes to complete their work efficiently and effectively.

Read: 17 Successful Management Tips for Leading Remote Teams

One of the challenges in distinguishing between managers and leaders is that some of the skillsets overlap. Successful managers often also possess many of the same abilities that define a leader, which includes empathizing, mentoring, motivating, and building relationships.

Key differences between management and leadership are that managers have less power to enact change. And most of their tasks center on controlling the day-to-day work to achieve business goals. Tasks include identifying process inefficiencies, monitoring projects, training direct reports, and communicating company goals.

Rick Itzkowich, an advisor to CEOs, is quoted to have explained the distinction this way:

“Leaders are visionary. They're strategic, setting the forward direction of the company. A leader's charisma lights a fire in people to perform. Managers are tactical. They run the day-to-day operations of a company. Lighting fires under people to get their jobs done.”

Leaders vs. managers: key differences

The key differences provided in the situations below are generalizations. They aren’t intended to serve as definitive rules, but to provide a deeper understanding.

‍Roles held

Leadership roles require you to be a visionary; manager roles want you to be a tactician. Take for example a project leader vs. project manager. Project leaders strategize plans and inspire people to achieve them. Project managers execute the plans and ensure people deliver their work on time.

Since leaders can be defined by a set of characteristics and skills, it’s possible to be a leader without the role. In a Forbes article quote, executive coach Doc Norton explained:

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“The best managers are leaders, but the two are not synonymous. Leadership is the result of action. If you act in a way that inspires, encourages, or engages others, you are a leader. It doesn't matter your title or position.”

In contrast, managers are defined by a title and set of responsibilities within an organization. So, you can’t be a manager without the role.

Work approach

Leaders are independent thinkers who are willing to question why things are done a certain way and take bold risks to benefit the organization long term. Just as importantly, when decisions don’t work out as planned, they’re willing to reverse decisions and explore new courses.

When Nitin Nohria was Dean at Harvard Business School, he described management and leadership this way:

“I think of management as working with other people to make sure the goals an organization has articulated are executed. It’s the process of working with others to ensure the effective execution of a chosen set of goals. Leadership is about developing what the goals should be. It’s more about driving change.”

Team management

Leaders inspire and motivate people to share their vision and take action toward creating it. Leaders bring out the best work from people by ensuring each person is aligned with the team’s vision and by providing an environment that encourages collaboration and innovation.

Managers bring out the best work from people by taking care to assign the right tasks to each person, optimizing workloads, and perhaps giving individuals opportunities to expand their career potential.

Both managers and leaders may be open to feedback, self-improvement, are curious and humble, and welcome new perspectives. However, these attributes are expected of good leaders and are intentionally developed because a leader’s job is to create value for others and the organization. Managers may want to improve the same attributes, but their jobs aren’t dependent on it.

Problem solving

When facing challenges, leaders aren’t tied to doing things according to how it’s always been. They analyze failures and challenges so they aren’t repeated, and develop solutions that strengthen the company in the long run.

In describing how leaders approach challenges, executive coach Teri Citterman said:

“Leaders must have the courage to see and say what others fear, to stand in the center of the fire, sit with the discomfort of doing hard things, and live with the power that comes from both failure and success.”

Managers usually don’t have the authority to challenge the status quo. They resolve challenges by working within the given processes, systems, and business culture. Compared to leaders, they may create shorter-term solutions where its success can be quantifiably measured.

Leadership example: PGA of America

No engineering team is ever big enough. But the typical approaches for securing talent—adding headcount, going to staffing agencies, offering work to agencies and consultants—are often so slow and expensive that they’re inefficient.

So Kevin Scott, Head of Technology at PGA of America, created a different solution. He told his engineering team that they’re smart, talented people who he expected to deliver “superhuman amounts of work.” But it was up to them to figure out how to get it all done.

Scott didn’t expect them to do it alone. He gave his team broad access to contract freelance specialists through Upwork, the world’s work marketplace.

Through Upwork, the engineers could access more than 10,000 skills. It didn’t take long for the engineers to see how they could focus on the work they do best by offering freelancers tasks that weren't core to the business.

For instance, if they wanted to update a presentation, they contracted a PowerPoint specialist to design it. If they wanted to test the viability of an idea, they contracted the appropriate developer to test it.

The team wasn’t outsourcing, they were skill sourcing. The difference is that in outsourcing, employees give away their work. In skill sourcing, on-demand talent help employees do their jobs better. Such as contracting specialists to handle more complex projects. Or spinning up entire teams to increase productivity.

The result: The team completed projects three times faster at half the cost compared to their traditional means.

Scott’s solution didn’t just benefit the business. As a leader, he made sure it personally benefited each team member as well. Working with independent talent enabled the engineers to develop critical soft skills they may not have the opportunity to develop otherwise. Some of the skills are learning to manage project teams, honing their communication skills, improving their creativity, and collaborating with people from diverse backgrounds and cultures.

Adopting a new work model turned out better than expected. Scott said:

“When employees aren’t limited by internal skillsets or resources, they can extend their capabilities and leverage their time. Freeing up their bandwidth enables them to put their energy across what’s more valuable, so they can create bigger improvements and changes that help themselves and the team. And at the same time, they were just cruising through work.”

Lead further with Upwork

Leadership is a choice and is available to everyone. Upwork provides a robust work marketplace where you can find the ideal coaches to help develop your leadership skills or, as Kevin Scott did, create new ways of working that expand the business’s potential. See what’s possible on Upwork.