We compare the terms leadership and management today on the episode. Both roles leader and manager are necessary to keeping a business going. We discuss our own definitions of leadership and management.

Hiten makes the point that early on in a business you need to focus on leading a team and then move into managing them once things are established. Today we discuss what both roles do for a business.

We cover these topics today:

What is a CEO

At the end of the day finding the right people to manage and lead is based on your own goals for the business.

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Steli Efti:  Hey, everyone. This is Steli Efti.

Hiten Shah:  And this is Hiten Shah.

Steli Efti:  And today at The Startup Chat, we’re going to talk about management versus leadership. So this is going to be a fun episode. Just because this has been a topic that I’ve been thinking about a lot, it’s also kind of a current thing that’s going on in the company so I’m super curious to hear your thoughts on this. Well, first, I do believe that there’s a massive difference between management and leadership.

Hiten Shah:  So I pulled up Wikipedia.

Steli Efti:  Nice.

Hiten Shah:  So let me just there.

Steli Efti:  Okay.

Hiten Shah:  I’m going to just read what they say. So they say management in businesses and organizations is the function that coordinates the efforts of people to accomplish goals and objectives by using available resources efficiently and effectively. So management is about using resources towards goals and objectives. It’s their definition in business.

Leadership, so there’s been some research and stuff and so this is what I think they’ve said. Leadership is both a research area and a practical skill. Regarding the ability of an individual or organization to lead or guide other individuals, teams or entire organizations. That’s the sort of short version. So that one is really just—that one is really mostly about skill, it sounds like. And management more about maybe you could say coordination?

Steli Efti:  I haven’t totally reversed. To me, leadership is the quality that you have found the answer to a common question like when do we need to go, what needs to be built, what needs to be accomplished, what are we trying to conquer? And like leadership is somebody defining the answer to a question and then taking the steps towards accomplishing that and inspiring people to want to follow that person to help with that solution or help accomplish that thing. That’s leadership and to me that’s much more of natural and authentic than management.

Management to me is like once we’ve—leadership is like defining the end-goal and being the first one to take the steps towards that end-goal and management is about defining the route, right? And organizing people and when we break and what we eat and what we drink and when we’re going to make stops and how to get there in the most efficient and effective manner. Management is about organizing the resources to get to that goal.