Leadership v. Management

Before coming to Virginia Tech, I was employed for twelve years at a Washington, DC-based think tank, the Institute on Religion and Democracy. During my tenure at the IRD, I worked on the business operations of the organization. Others performed programmatic functions. I supported their work. My time was spent organizing fundraising mailings, processing payroll, maintaining the database, keeping personnel records, producing the annual budget and the like. As a small watch-dog organization, on occasion, I would attend events and report on what I found.

Despite my less visible role, I nonetheless considered myself a leader. Each president for whom I worked praised my efforts. I received increasing responsibility, rising from Administrative Director, to Director of Operations and Development, and eventually Vice President for Operations. At the peak of a two-year expansion, I supervised the largest segment of the staff, supervising five of IRD’s sixteen employees.

But greater responsibility, promotion, and pay raises do not necessarily indicate one’s position of leadership. Recently, I have come to better understand the difference between leadership and management. Upon reflection, my work at IRD can largely be described as managerial. Perhaps others can benefit from my experience and this reflection upon the difference between the two.

Professor and author Peter Northouse defines leadership as "a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal." He finds that leadership and management have overlapping and similar characteristics, such as working with people or goal accomplishment.

But there is a significant difference. John Kotter describes it this way in A force for Change: How Leadership differs from Management:

Some have said that leadership is eighty percent perspiration and twenty percent inspiration. The actual ratio may differ depending on any given situation. Managers can be effective leaders, but not all effective managers are leaders. It’s the inspiration that marks the difference.