Management is the role and act of managing: Keeping schedules. Setting priorities. Implementing procedures and processes. More importantly, a manager is a coach, mentor, and guidance counselor whose purpose is to achieve results through the people they direct.

The four basic roles of a great manager are: to know how to select and hire the right people; to be able to set accurate performance expectations; to be able to motivate and help each employee excel; and to successfully develop each person.

The key principle of a manager is to focus on the individual. It is critical to the success of the business unit that the manager knows the ins and outs of each person. That she knows the triggers, the strengths and weaknesses, and the unique style of each person in her charge.

It is not the manager’s role to change people - you cannot put in what is not there. The role is rather to bring out what is there - to release their talents and build their strengths.

Leadership, on the other hand, is first a service - and then a process and a journey. Being a manager or a CEO does not make you a leader. What does make a leader is ... followers. Followers willingly follow their leaders. They trust their leader and they look to their leader for enthusiasm, strategy, inspiration, and vision.

A leader’s chief responsibility is to rally people to a better future. In order to do that you must be trustworthy and you have to communicate your vision in a clear and concise way that will resonate with your followers and move them to action.

Trust, integrity, vision, and clarity are the key words to leadership. Failing in any one of these can cause irreparable damage to your capacity to lead. In order to be a great leader, you must continually work on building your talents, your vision, your ability to communicate, and, most importantly, your integrity. People don’t necessarily listen to everything you say - but they see everything you do. If what you do and what you say are not in congruence, your integrity and trustworthiness are tarnished - and your ability to lead is degraded.

Leadership and Management – don’t confuse the roles. Great managers are not leaders-in-waiting, and great leaders are not more advanced managers. The differences are so profound that it is rare to find great leadership and management talent in a single individual.

Leaders look outward. They look to the future, strategize, seek alternate routes, and plan. They are visionaries and communicators who must focus on that which is universal in their organization.

Managers look inward. Inside the company and inside each individual to find talent, motivational triggers, goals, needs, and style. They must focus on the individual to turn talent into performance.

The common outlook of manager as “leader-in-waiting” degrades the role of manager to a not-yet-ready state and the outlook of leader as a more advanced manager diminishes the importance of vision and strategy.

The company that overlooks or confuses these differences will suffer - they will loose the catalystic value of each role and fail to develop the strengths of their leaders and managers.