The naive 'manager vs. leader' idea

This article is an attempt to correct the common misconception about the difference between a manager and a leader. The topic we've all stumbled upon in our LinkedIn feeds and seen in certain ex-credible resources like... well, let's not name it!

Who's a manager?

Management is an organizational position. When the organization makes someone a manager, it expects that person to deliver certain results with certain people and resources given to them. To do so, they need to motivate their people in one way or another.

To make it reasonable, the organization has to give the manager a certain amount of authority to match what it expects the manager to do. The manager can use this authority as a motivational tool.

Who's a leader?

The old-fashioned meaning of a leader was limited to managers, but nowadays, we use it to refer to anyone who motivates people to contribute to the achievement of desired results.

Intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation

There are two types of motivation, intrinsic and extrinsic:

• A manager who gives an employee an ultimatum to do something right or get fired is using extrinsic motivation.
• A manager who earns the respect of their people and can, therefore, get results by convincing them is using intrinsic motivation.
• A non-manager employee who cares about the result and keeps others motivated by reminding them of how great and fulfilling their contribution is is using intrinsic motivation.

Manager vs. leader

A manager has some level of authority in the organization, and they can either use that authority to create extrinsic motivation (e.g., rewards) or just use intrinsic motivation. A leader who's not a manager can only use intrinsic motivation.

Studies suggest that intrinsic motivation is more sustainable, so we prefer to use that when possible.

Based on all of this, we can consider the following relationship between these two concepts:

The good, the bad, and...

The common naive formulation presents "leader" as good and "manager" as bad. Those who do this are not comparing managers and leaders but comparing bad managers and good leaders, which is misleading.

A manager who uses only extrinsic motivation won't be very successful and, in fact, will be very annoying to the people who work under them. Let's call these people "bad managers". Managers who use a combination of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation are more pleasant to work for and more successful. Let's call them "good managers".

Now, we can have the following diagram:

... and the ugly

This topic is not complete unless we also talk about the context of the naive idea. Why do some people promote the naive idea?

There are two main types of people who do so:

1. The trendsetters: Agile product development used to be a diverse set of smart ideas, and most of them didn't have anything against the project manager role (e.g., DSDM and XP). However, one of the first-generation ones was against the project manager role and promoted a decentralized project management system -- that was Scrum. Nowadays, all Agile systems are Scrum or flavors of it, and therefore, people who are not familiar with the broad range of Agile ideas think that having a project manager is against being Agile. This concept, mixed with the fact that some of the key people in this community tend to create the illusion of an external enemy to strengthen their position and gain more money, power, and fame, motivates them to question the project manager role. One attempt in doing so has been to target "management" in general with this naive formulation of manager vs. leader.
2. The careless followers: Not everyone who promotes the naive idea knows what they are doing; they just see a trend, plus a colorful visual, and share it on social media or add a comment about a partially supporting concept without thinking about all the consequences. This behavior, which is very common on social media, creates a vicious cycle and brings more careless people into the mix, and suddenly, a false idea like this becomes widespread.

Who cares?!

So, why did I write this article? Why does it matter whether someone uses a correct definition with internal consistency or an incorrect, meaningless definition that has become trendy?

There's a difference:

• The incorrect definition gives people the idea that to be a good leader, they need to forget about the management knowledge and best practices and search somewhere else. Yes, they are ready to sell you what you need!
• The correct definition suggests that being a good leader is mostly included in being a good manager, and the way to improve your leadership skills is that you simply have to improve your management skills.

Is the management knowledge perfect? Of course not! But it's much better than the "other thing". The management knowledge and best practices have evolved in a long time with trial and error and work much better than the "trendy" ideas someone comes up with in a small, specific situation and then tries to earn money with it by framing it as something that would work for everyone; those incomplete ideas are

• focused on kindness and understanding, forgetting that those are important, but they must be balanced by the right amount of assertiveness; and
• focused on what the leader has to do for the team, forgetting that the leader should pay attention to four different domains: self, team, organization, and broader society and environment; and
• focused on a few aspects of leadership such as motivation, forgetting the other aspects, such as resilience, safeguarding, and ethics.

Update 2025-04-19: An expert who doesn't follow trends blindly may appear old-fashioned, which is something most people are afraid of. I've explained it in an article titled real experts may seem old-fashioned.

Update 2025-09-11: OMIMO has published the Leader's Behavior Compass, which explains leadership with its desirable behaviors. I've updated the last part of the article to explain the incompleteness of the trendy, incorrect idea compared to the complete idea of leadership that comes from the Compass.

Update 2025-10-18: Hypes are created because of what some people do. Those people have 3 different reasons for doing it, and understanding that is crucial in deciding where you want to stand related to hypes. I've explained it in an article titled meet AI fanboyes, Tom, Dick, and Harry. The article is mainly about AI, but it works for any hype, including the trend explained in this article.

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