Recently, I was contacted by an organizational administrator who said that he needed to talk to me about leadership development. I went to his office at the appointed time. He began to ask me questions about issues related to dealing with managing and appraising employee performance and making the organization run more effectively and efficiently.
I responded, “Those aren’t leadership issues. Those are management issues.”
I wish I had a nickel for every time during the years I have spent studying organizations, leading and managing organizations and in serving as an organizational consultant that I heard someone use the words “management” and “leadership” interchangeably.
I had begun to think that maybe there was something wrong with me because the confusion between the two bothered me so much. Then I chanced upon an article entitled “Management Is (Still) Not Leadership” by Leadership guru John Kotter, the former Professor of Leadership at Harvard Business School and current Chief Innovation Officer at Kotter International.
The Need for Balance Between Leadership and Management
