FBC – 396 – Manager vs Leader. What’s better?

Manager vs Leader. What's better?

If you were given a choice, would you rather be a leader or managing people?

Which option is the most advancing for your career and your life in general?

In today's episode, we are going to break down the 2 options and help you choose the right path for you based on who you are as a person

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I heard this in a book that I was listening to and it reminded me of something I asked myself for quite a long time.

And to be honest, I'm just going to think out loud because these podcasts, they're kind of like spontaneous. But here in this case, it's not like I've prepared anything.

But anyway, the subject is the difference between management and leadership, OK? Because these are different concepts, if you ask me but it's very hard to define them and separate them.

So I've been asking myself, what's the difference? Would I rather be a leader or a manager?

So starting with the manager. I mean, now that I think about it, for me, they're very different. I have my own interpretation of it. I haven't checked the definition in the dictionary or something. So this is primarily and only based on my take on this.

And so I was thinking that management for me is more of an operational role. I will say more operational where I think that leadership will be more kind of like spiritual and mind set or something. If I'm looking at these two words and thinking about them, this is how I will define them based on my appreciation in my personal story.

So now the question is how to manage people. You know, I managed a few teams and stuff and the question is how good the manager was. So was I a good manager? Because now when I'm thinking about it again, everything is tangled together.

So it's very hard to kind of like extract the management part from the leadership part and look at the tasks. But if you ask people, you might have some very different answers. I think my management style was unique. You can ask anybody who was working on my team or any of the teams that I've managed.

And I don't think I was a good manager from the definition of management, you know, like the proper thing. And in organizing this and doing all the KPIs and the reviews together and follow up this and checking people's work and all that kind of stuff, I think I sucked at it.

I, admit this is really not what I want to do. For example here in my company, I'm not actually managing anybody. As strange as it might sound, I don't consider being their manager or anything, because of the way it's structured.

Manager vs Leader. What's better?

For my staff, in essence, they're their own managers. They don't need me to manage them because I don't want to do it. Who wants to manage people? I think people are smart enough and responsible enough. The people that I choose to work with me in the company, I think they're mature enough to manage themselves so that I don't have to do it.

But management is important. If you have bad management, you can have good leadership and bad management, and then things will suck.

Even though there is a great leadership, you still need some good management. OK, so it's not like you can be bad, like you can get away with one being horrible.

The leadership role for me, it's more spiritual, so the leadership is kind of like passing values and the right mind set and empowering people and getting these people to achieve greater things and all move in the same direction.

OK, which is also, you know, when you're a manager, you have to do some of that stuff. But I think it's the leadership role that’s most important. Showing your example. You're just showing the example. It's not you guys have to do this and all that kind of stuff, but you are in there as well showing the kind of the direction of the company, the value.