Business Style Differences
Manager vs. Leader

Managers
Emphasize rationality and control; are problem-solvers (focusing on goals, resources, organization structures, or people); often ask question, "What problems have to be solved, and what are the best ways to achieve results so that people will continue to contribute to this organization?"; are persistent, tough-minded, hard working, intelligent, analytical, tolerant and have goodwill toward others.

Leaders
Perceived as brilliant, but sometimes lonely; achieve control of themselves before they try to control others; can visualize a purpose and generate value in work; are imaginative, passionate, non-conforming risk-takers.

Managers and leaders have very different attitudes toward goals.

Managers
Adopt impersonal, almost passive, attitudes toward goals; decide upon goals based on necessity instead of desire and are therefore deeply tied to their organization's culture; tend to be reactive since they focus on current information.

Leaders
Tend to be active since they envision and promote their ideas instead of reacting to current situations; shape ideas instead of responding to them; have a personal orientation toward goals; provide a vision that alters the way people think about what is desirable, possible, and necessary.

Managers' and leaders' conceptions of work.

Managers
View work as an enabling process; establish strategies and makes decisions by combining people and ideas; continually coordinate and balance opposing views; are good at reaching compromises and mediating conflicts between opposing values and perspectives; act to limit choice; tolerate practical, mundane work because of strong survival instinct which makes them risk-averse.

Leaders
Develop new approaches to long-standing problems and open issues to new options; first, use their vision to excite people and only then develop choices which give those images substance; focus people on shared ideals and raise their expectations; work from high-risk positions because of strong dislike of mundane work.

Managers and leaders have very different relations with others.

Managers
Prefer working with others; report that solitary activity makes them anxious; are collaborative; maintain a low level of emotional involvement in relationships; attempt to reconcile differences, seek compromises, and establish a balance of power; relate to people according to the role they play in a sequence of events or in a decision-making process; focus on how things get done; maintain controlled, rational, and equitable structures ; may be viewed by others as inscrutable, detached, and manipulative.

Leaders
Maintain inner perceptiveness that they can use in their relationships with others; relate to people in intuitive, empathetic way; focus on what events and decisions mean to participants; attract strong feelings of identity and difference or of love and hate; create systems where human relations may be turbulent, intense, and at times even disorganized.

The self-identity of managers versus leaders is strongly influenced by their past.

Managers
Report that their adjustments to life have been straightforward and that their lives have been more or less peaceful since birth; have a sense of self as a guide to conduct and attitude which is derived from a feeling of being at home and in harmony with their environment; see themselves as conservators and regulators of an existing order of affairs with which they personally identify and from which they gain rewards; report that their role harmonizes with their ideals of responsibility and duty; perpetuate and strengthen existing institutions; display a life development process which focuses on socialization...this socialization process prepares them to guide institutions and to maintain the existing balance of social relations.

Leaders
Reportedly have not had an easy time of it; lives are marked by a continual struggle to find some sense of order; do not take things for granted and are not satisfied with the status quo; report that their "sense of self" is derived from a feeling of profound separateness; may work in organizations, but they never belong to them; report that their sense of self is independent of work roles, memberships, or other social indicators of social identity; seek opportunities for change (i.e. technological, political, or ideological); support change; find their purpose is to profoundly alter human, economic, and political relationships; display a life development process which focuses on personal mastery...this process impels them to struggle for psychological and social change.

Submitted by Judy Parsetti
Cincinnati, OH

Previous Page