I’ll start by being very transparent about this topic.
It’s sat on my list of things to write about for over a year now and pretty much every week, I’ve looked at it and not really wanted to write about it. The reason being that I’ve always gone back and forth on whether it actually matters that you’re a manager or a leader.
Part of me has wondered about whether it’s just a semantics thing or whether you can actually draw clear lines between what a manager does and what a leader does.
But over time and the more that I’ve thought about it, the more that I’ve realised that there are subtle, but important differences between a manager and a leader. I also work with a bunch of managers and leaders in my day-to-day work with digital agencies.
So I’m starting to see the difference between them in a very tangible way.
Today, I want to talk about the differences between them by listing out what I believe to be the attributes of a manager and the attributes of a leader. More importantly, I want to talk about how to transition from a manager to a leader.
Before that, let’s ask ourselves an important question that I don’t see asked very often.
Do you actually want to be a leader?
Becoming a leader isn’t easy and I’d argue that you never really “complete” becoming a leader. By this, I mean that you don’t just check a bunch of boxes and you’re suddenly a leader.
It’s a never ending learning process and I think that effective leaders understand this. They are aware that they don’t know everything and whilst they may have a wealth of experience, they know that there is always more to learn.
Being a leader isn’t for everyone, even if you’re technically capable of being one.
It’s fine to say that taking on the increased responsibility of being a leader isn’t for you. You may well decide that you want to just manage people effectively and not push too hard beyond what you’re required to do on a daily basis.
In reality, this means that you’ll probably focus heavily on the attributes of being a manager that we talk about below, trying to be the absolute best that you can be in these areas. Again, there is nothing wrong with focusing on these areas and frankly, there aren’t enough managers out there who do this, so it still puts you in a good position to progress in your career.
Having said that, you may limit your growth a little if you’re not so keen on developing the attributes of a leader that we talk about below. So it’s something that you should think about and decide where you feel you would be more effective.
Leadership isn’t about seniority
Having said everything above, I would point out that being a leader doesn’t mean that you’re the most senior person in a company or even a team.
Everyone, including interns and complete newbies, can display leadership qualities and attributes.
So even if you’re just starting out in your career or you’ve just become a manager for the first time, don’t assume that you need to get to a senior position before you can act or be perceived as a leader.
The one valid reason why people typically believe that leadership is connected to seniority is because becoming a leader often requires experiences. Experiences can take time for someone to get and as a result, it feels like there is a correlation between being a leader and being senior.
But be careful because there isn’t always causation!
The qualities and attributes of a manager
Let’s start with the basics. You become a manager because you’ve given the job title and responsibilities of one. You may be promoted into a position such as:
- SEO Team Manager
- Head of Marketing
- PR Team Lead
You get the idea.
For me, you become a manager by virtue of being given a job where you manage people day-to-day. That’s it.
In terms of the kinds of things that you actually do that makes you an effective manager, we’re talking about the following.
You follow systems and processes effectively
An effective manager will make good use of systems and processes to get the best out of their team on a day-to-day basis.
This includes things such as:
- Creating good personal development plans.
- Running effective, agenda-led one-on-one meetings.
- Using various methods to deliver good feedback.
A good manager will simply get these things done well and to a high standard.
The unfortunate truth is that most managers aren’t very good at managing people! So even if you can get to the point where you are doing these foundational, minimum viable manager activities well, you will be better than most managers.
Is able to ensure that their team meets standard expectations
A good manager is able to work with their team to outline what their expectations are for success, communicate them effectively and have their team meeting (some ideally exceed) these expectations.
Essentially, they understand what success looks like for their team as a whole and as individuals and are able to deliver on it.
Whilst not easy, I believe that this is table stakes for managers and ensuring that their team meets expectations consistently is a fundamental deliverable.
You’re able to deal with common management issues
The truth is that most managers will deal with the same kinds of issues over and over again in their career. Of course, each one may require a different solution, but most issues aren’t out of the ordinary.
For example, most managers will need to deal with:
- An underperforming team member.
- Solving relatively minor misbehaviors such as someone being late.
- Telling someone that they’re not getting a pay rise or promotion.
Whilst every one of these situations is different, they’re not uncommon and you can quickly build your experience in dealing with them. Not to mention that there are lots and lots of resources out there that can guide you on how to deal with them for the first time.
The qualities and attributes of a leader
Let’s start with one of the biggest (if not the biggest) differences between a manager and a leader:
Your team decides if you’re a leader or not.
You don’t get given a job title and description that automatically makes you a leader. It’s more intangible than that.
Even if you become a CEO of a company where part of your job description is leading the company, that doesn’t make you a leader.
Much like other people decide if you’re an expert or not. Other people decide if you’re a leader or not. This is because leadership is displayed via your actions, values and behaviours.
Crucially, it’s the actions, values and behaviours that don’t really fall into expected processes or systems like those that we’ve talked about above.
Let’s look at what some of those are.
A leader stays calm when something unexpected goes wrong
When something goes wrong in your team, they’ll probably look to you for help and guidance. If you respond with calmness, logic and reasoning, your team will also remain calm and work on the problem.
A good leader knows the importance of staying calm under pressure but more importantly, they are capable of doing this when faced with situations that are personally unprecedented. They know that there isn’t a playbook or process for every single challenge that comes up, despite most challenges being fairly common and repeatable.
Is capable of handling situations that they’ve never encountered before
Leading on from the previous point, it’s not just about staying calm. It’s also about having a process and approach for dealing with situations where you genuinely don’t have experience or a process to fall back on.
This doesn’t just mean big, unexpected challenges, it can be things such as a type of underperformance from a team member that you’ve never seen before or it could be a conflict between team members that is unusual.
When this happens, a leader knows how to start thinking through the process of fixing the problem when they have zero reference or experience. They just know instinctively how to break down a problem and start to figure out a solution. A good leader also knows when NOT to apply an existing process or system to a problem because it’s not suitable and that they need to come up with something new.
People choose to follow you because they want to
An effective leader doesn’t need a job title, authority or seniority. They are followed by their colleagues because they believe in that person and perceive them as a leader.
This only happens over a period of time when you have earned this level of respect from your colleagues and again, even the most junior intern is capable of this.
It’s likely that you’ll earn this over time by doing things such as:
- Taking ownership of problems and projects that need fixing.
- Take accountability for your own mistakes and things that you could have done better.
- Listen to the opinions of those around you when trying to make a decision.
Essentially, people will make you a leader – you can’t just say that you are one and that’s it.
How to make the move from manager to leader
Finally, let’s talk about some of the things that you can proactively do in order to make the move from an effective manager to an effective leader.
It takes time
Remember that becoming a leader takes time. This is because you don’t just “do leadership” or tick it off a list. Even if you show leadership qualities whilst working on a particular project, you need to do this over and over again before you stand a chance of being seen as a leader.
You can’t just act like a leader once or twice. It takes time and consistency which is often why people believe that you need to be senior in order to be a leader which again, isn’t strictly true.
So be patient and look for opportunities to build experience and display leadership qualities to those around you.
Focus on developing your soft skills
We’ve covered previously the importance (and difficulty) and teaching your team soft skills as well as hard skills.
The same applies to you as a manager.
You need to cover the fundamentals that we’ve spoken about previously in order to be an effective manager and cover the hard skills to some extent.
In terms of soft skills, you need to think about developing your experience in areas such as:
- Emotional intelligence and looking beyond what’s being said out loud in a conversation.
- Seeking to understand each of your team members in terms of their goals, ambitions and insecurities.
- Trying to be as empathetic as possible and putting yourself in the shoes of others and seeing their perspective.
These things aren’t easy and you’ll never be “done” with them. But just having the awareness of the differences between a manager and a leader, then proactively working on developing your leadership qualities, will put you on the right path.
