Management vs. Leadership

What is the difference between leadership and management?

While many people believe they are synonymous, they aren't and shouldn’t be used interchangeably.

In the workplace, it's key to have both great leaders and managers.

Organizations rely on strong leaders to direct the organization and achieve its mission. However, they also require good managers to ensure employees and teams are aligned with the company’s goals and that tasks are getting done. Let's dig a little deeper.

Traits of a Manager

A manager is hired or appointed within an organization based on specific skills, knowledge and expertise to plan, execute and oversee people and responsibilities (i.e. specific projects, tasks, roles, etc.).

Managers are responsible for aligning employees with the core company values and goals.

Traits of a Leader

On the other hand, a leader is a person that commands influence.

The key trait of a leader is respect, which is typically earned rather than given.

Leadership looks at the big picture, inspires and motivates. Leaders are visionaries, and the majority of them have a clear sense of where the organization should be in the future. However, they're not the only ones responsible for making that vision come true: Leaders set the goals for managers to follow.

The Most Important Skills of a Leader

According to Google’s Project Oxygen, an internal study meant to help create the most effective organization possible, the most important skills of a leader are:

• Coaching
• Empathy
• Communicating and listening well
• Critical thinking and problem solving, and
• Making connections across complex ideas

At Shapiro Negotiations Institute (SNI), we conduct a lot of training within leadership programs because our influencing expertise address these critical core skills–mainly communicating, listening, empathy and making connections.

Empathy is a critical skill for a leader to possess as it helps develop deeper relationships, which leads to greater employee satisfaction and improved individual and company performance.

An empathic workplace is one where we're more comfortable voicing our opinion–which generates increased creativity and innovation–where employees are more likely to support teammates so that the organization takes on a more collaborative approach.

An Exercise of Empathy

To develop empathy, try listening to someone else without thinking about how you'll respond. The ability to do this vastly improves communication and listening skills.

Two very easy to implement tips for improving your listening are to:

1. Remove distractions (e.g. your computer while on a call, emailing while talking to someone, etc.) and
2. Have a notepad handy to take notes. While a notepad seems, and is, such a simple concept, merely having one in front of you makes it less likely you'll interrupt-which is one of the worst common listening habits-and more likely to take notes. Additionally, having questions ready for a meeting can go a long way as they signal you're prepared, respect the other person’s time and make it more likely they will do plenty of talking while they answer your questions.

But empathy is hard. It takes time to listen to others, it takes effort to focus on others and not multitask and it's not what we're used to–we need to challenge preconceived notions, stereotypes, etc.

The most effective empathy is when you're both truly willing to listen and put yourself in the other's shoes, but then, also taking advantage of the fact that you're less emotionally attached to be able to do something about it.

Breaking Through an "Empathy Gap"

Many managers struggle with what we call an “empathy gap.” This means we're state-dependent, so, when we're happy it's hard for us to understand what it's like to be in a bad mood, and vice versa.

And the same occurs with other people–if we're in a great mood and our colleague is in a bad mood, it's very difficult to truly understand what it's like and to be empathetic.

Keep this in mind when you communicate with colleagues as it goes a long way. My colleague, Jeff often says in programs, “Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care.”

Building Rapport

To build a connection, people need to perceive similarities–great leaders often do this intuitively.

This is why small talk is so important–it greases the wheels of communication and sets up chemistry.

Rapport building is also closely associated with building trust and credibility. This is about the other party feeling that you have their best interest at heart and/or your intentions are genuine, along with you having the skills/knowledge to do the job/manage the project/lead people.

How do you build credibility/skills? Create great content, etc. or borrow it (case studies, references, testimonials). How do you build rapport? Smile, have open body language, ask questions, show genuine interest, don’t interrupt, and mirror phrases and mannerisms.

All of the skills discussed above are critical for leaders but are also valuable for managers, and frankly are core soft skills important for every job function. It's no surprise that Google and many other organizations have labeled them as critical skills-and we recommend you do the same.

For more information on developing your empathy and communication skills, feel free to check out SNI’s newest book, Persuade, which will be released on July 7.