Leader, Manager, or Both?

The magazine Harvard Business Review first published an article by Abraham Zelznik in 1977 that highlighted the differences between leadership and management.  Since that time, the question on whether leaders and managers are different has been posed in an a number of articles published both in HBR and elsewhere (see "What Leaders Really Do", "Do Managers and Leaders Really Do Different Things?", "Leadership vs. Management: What's the Difference?" for a few of my favorites).  It's an age-old question, and some experts trace it back to Niccolò Machiavelli (others as far back as Plato).  

While I do personally believe that leadership and management are different, I would say that they are the proverbial two sides of the same coin.  They can't exist in isolation, because in reality, we need both.  As yet another HBR article claims, "The Best Managers are Leaders - and Vice Versa".  As Jeroen Kraaijenbrink suggests in an article for Forbes magazine ("There is No Difference Between Managers and Leaders"), the distinction between leadership and management is a myth.  Vineet Nayar (writing for HBR) suggests that we should lead people and manage work.  I like that a lot.  Rear Admiral Grace Hopper (I've posted about her in the past - see "The tale of the five monkeys", "A few of history's greatest leaders", and "Organizational enemas") said, "You don't manage people, you manage things.  You lead people."

I think part of the issue is that when we think of leadership, our minds naturally go to those charismatic, visionary leaders who have accomplished great things throughout history.  Conversely, we tend to associate management with boring, bureaucratic, and mundane (see "The Best Managers are Boring Managers").  The problem is that you don't necessarily need to be charismatic to be a great leader though (see "The Myth of the Brilliant, Charismatic Leader") and managing key operational processes doesn't have to be boring!

I am probably guilty of trying to separate and differentiate leadership and management in the past, and for that I apologize!  The truth is that in order to be effective, an executive needs to be a good leader AND a good manager.  It's not an "or" question, it's an "and" one.