ROYAL AIR FORCE LAKENHEATH, England -- Manager and leader, they both mean the same thing. Right?
As a senior airman getting ready to head off to Airman Leadership School sometime in the near future, I caught myself wondering about what type of supervisor I would be; a manager or a leader?
According to dictionary.com, a manager is defined as:
- A person who has control or direction of an institution, business, etc., or of a part, division, or phase of it.
- A person who manages: the manager of our track team.
- A person who controls and manipulates resources and expenditures, as of a household.
And a leader is defined as:
- A person or thing that leads.
- A guiding or directing head, as of an army, movement, or political group.
According to Warren G. Bennis (page 243 of the Professional Development Guide) a leader is someone who gets people to want to do what needs to be done. Leaders motivate, develop and inspire subordinates.
To skim through the above definitions quickly, you would think a leader and a manager are one in the same, interchangeable. But if you take a closer look, there are a few key words that really distinguish the two from each other.
We'll start with manager. A person who has control or direction, a person who controls. So to me, a manager is someone who merely controls their subordinates and tries to simply control their environment around them to get the end result.
Now on to leader. The word that has the most significance in that definition is guiding. Based on the examples listed above, a leader is someone that guides and inspires subordinates to achieve a common goal.
Here is what I have come up with. A manager is a person who considers subordinates simply as pieces of a puzzle, a means to an end to the current problem, resources to be manipulated and controlled to achieve a desired outcome. A leader is a person with a different take on subordinates. Those pieces of the puzzle that a manager sees, the leader views them each as individuals, each with a different skill set that if appropriately developed and guided will benefit both. To sum it all up, managers are people you work for, and although you may work for a leader, at the end of the day you just feel like you are working with them toward a common goal.
Again I ask myself, which one will I be? The truth is you have to be a little bit of both. I hope to be an inspiring leader who manages when needed.