HBR CLASSIC
Managers and Leaders
Are They Different?
Further Reading
ARTICLES
What Leaders Really Do
by John P. Kotter
Harvard Business Review
May–June 1990
Product no. 3820
Kotter expands on the debate Zaleznik started
in 1977, agreeing that managers and leaders
are very different—but also arguing that they
are complementary and equally important. He
stresses that organizations need both managers and leaders to thrive, especially in turbulent times. Kotter explores their differences
along the dimensions of complexity and
change.
Management, he writes, is about promoting
stability—bringing order and predictability to
complex, chaotic situations. Specifically, managers focus on planning and budgeting, organizing and staffing, and problem solving. They
make it easier for people to complete their
work, day after day.
Leadership, on the other hand, is about producing change: setting direction for change
through vision and strategy, and aligning
people behind initiatives. Leaders touch people at their deepest levels, getting them to believe in alternative futures and to take initiative based on shared visions. They provoke a
sense of belonging and idealism.
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The Work of Leadership
by Ronald A. Heifetz and Donald L. Laurie
Harvard Business Review
January–February 1997
Product no. 4150
desire to have problems taken off their shoulders. Leaders can resist both by following
these six principles: 1) See the context in
which change must occur, 2) identify the
adaptive challenge, 3) regulate distress, 4)
watch for signs of work avoidance and bring
conflict into the light, 5) build collective selfconfidence, and 6) protect people who point
out contradictions and upset the status quo.
Covert Leadership: Notes on Managing
Professionals
by Henry Mintzberg
Harvard Business Review
November–December 1998
Product no. 98608
Mintzberg also focuses on the responsibilities
distinguishing leaders from managers, stressing that leaders are more vital than ever in the
knowledge economy. More and more work is
being done by trained and trusted professionals who don’t need direction and supervision—that is, others telling them how to do
their jobs. Instead, they need inspiration, protection, and support. Using the model of a
symphony orchestra conductor, Mintzberg
explores—and explodes—the myth that leaders must be in complete control. Through covert leadership—that is, functioning in a middle realm between absolute control and
complete powerlessness, and leading without
seeming to—leaders quietly infuse in others
the energy they need to excel.
Heifetz and Laurie examine the unique role of
leaders in the specific context of adaptive
problems—challenges in which both problems and potential solutions are murky. With
adaptive problems, leaders must engage their
entire organization in radically new ways of
thinking and acting. To prevail under these
conditions, leaders must resist the temptation
to give employees solutions and employees’
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