The Leadership Gap: Why “Manager” is Holding Us Back

Have you ever noticed that the word “management” is the go-to term when referring to anyone that has supervisory responsibilities or is a key decision maker within a company? Even mainstream leadership authors use the term “manager” when discussing leadership. The intermixing of the two words creates confusion and sets a low bar for leaders.

Management and Leadership are distinct, but work together. Leadership is about inspiring people. Management is about control and compliance. Management is a subset of leadership and all management must ride on the shoulders of leadership. Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper said it well,

 “You Manage Things; You Lead People”

Just take a spin through LinkedIn to see that the workplace needs better leadership behaviors. General Motors recently terminated 1,000 employees by email. Even worse, they terminated an employee with 38 years of service by email! Unfortunately, this sort of behavior is all too common.

The business case for better leadership

We need to change the behavior by starting with the words we use to describe leaders. If management is the default mode for people in positions of leadership, then business results are damaged. Gallup conducted a survey over 25 years tracking workplace culture and business results. Gallup found that companies in the top quartile had the best culture and 23% higher profits!

This should be a wake-up call! What I find ironic is that the article starts and ends by discussing how managers could be better leaders.

It is time for us to change the words that we use to match the behaviors that we expect.