There is often a debate regarding the distinction between the two terms. Some believe that they are synonyms, and for others, there is a very distinct line between them. I find them quite different in several ways. First, Management is the best way of achieving specific things. Leadership’s task is to define these particular things. “Management is doing things right; Leadership is doing the right things”, to put it in the words of Peter Drucker and Warren Bennis.
Second, Management is the process of searching for the appropriate tools to climb a rocky mountain. In contrast, the leader is already on top of the mountain, yelling “wrong summit” to the Managers ascending. Third, Management ensures that all book pages have the correct grammar, spelling, content and structure whilst Leadership puts numbers on the same unnumbered book. However, Leadership and Management are different sides of the same coin. They co-exist in numerous ways, and the one cannot be done without the valuable input of the other. Functional Management without competent Leadership is, as a non-famous person put it, “like organising the deck chairs on Titanic.”
