Difference between Leader and Manager in Management and Operations

This article explains the difference between a leader and a manager in the context of Management and Operations. It covers their roles, responsibilities, focus, theories, and vision.

Management and Operations

Difference between Leader and Manager
The term Manager can be defined as a person who controls and administrates the things to ensure
their duties in proper way as they should be happening. They are employed by the firm to monitor
the performance of others. Whereas, The Leader is defined as a person who creates logical vision
that can motivate and guide the people to achieve the target. Leader influences their employee or
subordinates. The leader and the manager have different key roles and practices towards the
employees inside the firm.
Parameter Manager Leader
Role Administration and management of
the task. Managers ensures the
things and activities are going in a
planned manner or not.
Leads employees towards the future.
Leader prefers training of all the
employees and polishes their skills to
let them shine. For example, Elon
Musk is one of the top leaders in the
world, whose vision and the positive
motivation of empowering
employees results in their skill
growth.
Responsibility set Managers manages as well as
supervises, always eager to remain
close to their task.
Leaders inspires and supports other
person to succeed. They recognize
the person is completely ready for
the task or not
What they care
about
Manager cares more about the
numbers then the people. They
always focuses upon the targets and
strictly orders the entire workforce
to get the job done.
Leader cars about the people and
employees. Leaders askes their team
if they are facing any problem then
the leader tries to resolve it . They
leads the individual as well as the
team towards the right path. They
encourages people to think out of the
box.
Based on System management theory: Transactional theory: Leaders always

motivational theories Managers believes in the system
management theory as they offers
rewards or appreciation on
completion of the task. As an
example: A manager at Tesco
motivates the sales team to complete
the targets in the return of the
incentives, bonuses or the cash
rewards. Manager follows the
theory to make the system more
productive or competetive for the
better management performance
(Nesheim, 2021).
follows the transactional theory, that
focuses upon quality and skill
improvement of the employees. They
enhance employees logical thinking
and motivates them to complete the
task to improve their skills. As an
example: Bill gates, as he visits the
production team on the daily basis to
ask lots of difficult question out of
his curiosity, untill he get satisfied
with the level of understanding
among the team.
Vision Manager always appriciates the
target fulfilment not the skills
within the organizational structure.
The structure of the organization
always have the complete details
upon the way of processing the task
Leaders cares about the skill
improvement in the person.
Employees are improving or not.
They motivate people to maintain the
culture among the team or within the
organization
Ideal situations are when the managers follows leadership skills also. However, they are
very different in the essence of role (Jung, Song and Yoon, 2021). In general for any organization to
be target achiever or successful, firm needs a manager that can organize and manage its staff,
whereas leader that can motivate and inspire the team to perform the best of their capability.

References:
Nesheim, T., 2021., Exploring the resource manager role in a project-based
organization. International Journal of Managing Projects in Business.
Jung, H. S., Song, M. K. and Yoon, H. H., 2021., The Effects of Workplace Loneliness on Work
Engagement and Organizational Commitment: Moderating Roles of Leader-Member
Exchange and Coworker Exchange., Sustainability. 13(2). p.948.