People often assume that being a manager means you’re a leader. But does being a good manager make you a good leader? There are about as many similarities between the two as there are differences. The main difference is that leaders inspire others to believe in their vision, whereas managers hire and guide people, often without any buy-in to the vision.

Anyone can be promoted to manager. But only you can decide to become a good leader. Very few people are good at both. As a business owner, you need to understand the difference and quickly identify it in yourself and the team around you.

What’s the difference?

Managers and leaders utilize different traits on the path to success, and both are important to the success of any organization. As a business owner, you want your team on board and working toward your vision. So, to achieve success, you need to be both or hire someone for the trait you lack.

Managers

Managers are typically people who have climbed the ranks through experience and hard work. Their job is to ensure that team members follow the rules and procedures, which they use and enforce in pursuit of a predictable outcome. As such, they often view variability and creativity as a threat to accomplishing a goal.

Their view of success is another way that managers differ from leaders. Managers will evaluate how closely team members adhere to processes and guidelines, then look at how well this produced the result they expected.

Leaders

Leaders, however, encourage their teams to get creative. They push team members to take risks and challenge themselves to achieve more. A leader is always trying to push for something new or better in pursuit of innovation. They see their team's creativity and variability as an opportunity to achieve the impossible. A good leader will help the team use these traits to achieve more.

Their view of success is simple: Leaders will measure what was achieved as well as what was learned. If the experience inspired or increased team excellence, it was successful.

Which are you?

There is no simple or straightforward test you can use to determine which best describes you. Instead, you must use your strengths and vision to decide. One of the easiest ways to self-assess is to consider your reaction to daily scenarios.

What’s in a name?

How important is your title? Would you prefer to be the vice president of the company so everyone instantly knows you’re in charge? Managers usually rely on their title to empower their authority. However, for a leader, the title is less important than the opportunity to innovate and succeed because leaders empower themselves and inspire their team to take necessary actions.

Where do you fit in?

How do you define your role? Is it based on results or on who and what you’re responsible for? A manager typically sees themself as overseeing the who and what. A leader only sees what they are trying to accomplish and how they will get there.

Who did what?

Another way to test yourself is to consider the worst-case scenario. Suppose a project goes wrong and it’s because one person made a mistake. When recounting this issue to superiors, managers and leaders handle it differently.

A manager will see the problem as being out of their control — that only one person is to blame for the failure — because a manager only feels responsible for what they say and do. On the other hand, a leader takes responsibility for the outcome. So, they take full responsibility for failure and see it as a learning point. They see the incident as a lesson in what to do differently moving forward.

There are many other ways the two differ, but these examples are great tools to decide which you are. While few are naturally good at both leadership and management, leaders are created, not born. So, you can still choose to become a great leader.

Why do you need both managers and leaders?

Both managers and leaders are essential to company success. But both serve a different purpose and take different paths to achieve that success.

Managers focus primarily on the here and now. They seek compliance and predictable results. In contrast, leaders are focused solely on the bigger picture and are more future-oriented. They seek to inspire their teams in the pursuit of excellence. Either way, both are dedicated to getting things done and getting the best result possible. In my experience, for a company to gain success, the business owner needs to identify if they are a manager or a leader and then quickly hire the opposite to support that growth.

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