Manager vs. Leader | No BS Management Advice
By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter People use the term manager and leader interchangeably yet they are very different roles. In this video, I use sports teams to illustrate the key difference. How to Elicit Missing InformationI’m approached pretty regularly about people who are a manager level wanting to improve their leadership and they don’t really understand the role of the leader versus the role of the manager. Let me give you a perspective. I’m going to take it from sports and see if it’s something you can relate to When you think
of a football team or basketball team or baseball team or soccer team, to use the American interpretation for football.
There are people who work on execution. They want people to run the plays better. They look at technique and the specific technique that a player might use to perform at a higher level. They coach people on technique. They coach people on execution. Those people are the equivalent of managers in an organization. A manager is someone who looks out at the staff and drives the bus.
Here’s the difference.
The leader is the one who inspires. They may have an overall perspective on what needs to be done and how it should be done. They create the vision for the organization and the vision for the team.
However, if you’ve seen any sort of sports movies or you’ve seen the locker room speech before the game, that’s designed to get people excited to get their players inspired to excel–that’s the role of the leader.
The leader’s job is not to drive the bus aggressively (although if his managers don’t do an effective job well, that reflects on him or her). The leader’s job is to get the managers focused in a particular direction, to get them to work hard on execution of the tasks that are under their jurisdiction and inspire everyone to excel.
The Big Career Management Lessons from The Shawshank RedemptionABOUT JEFF ALTMAN, THE BIG GAME HUNTER
