Leadership is different!

I have been seeing and responding to a number of posts on LinkedIn and other places all talking about the difference between leadership and management. I have seen things going all the way from describing the differences in great detail to saying they are the same- it is just a matter of semantics. I even saw a post recently sating do companies with a clear vision need leaders- or will good management that can implement the vision suffice.

I would argue passionately that they are different. I am not saying that one is better than the other, but we need them both.

Leadership is all about creating new paradigms or a paradigm shift- seeing a "disturbance in the force" and responding to it and helping others respond as well.

I saw an interesting editorial the other day about gun control and the right of each of us to "bear arms". The writer pointed out appropriately that at the time the Bill of Rights was written "arms" consisted of muskets. Kind of hard to conceal one under your coat or blast a bunch of people like you can with today's weaponry. That's a paradigm shift.

A little over 100 years ago we decided it wasn't ok to own other people. In 1964 for really the first time under law it became illegal to discriminate against someone because of their gender, their race, their color, their religion, or their national origin. Those were paradigms shifts. Those paradigm shifts came from leaders, not managers!