Managers and Leaders
Here is the one thing that cuts across nearly all books on leadership today: a leader is not
merely a manager.2 (The one heretic is Peter Drucker who for the past sixty years kept saying
that leader and manager are the same).3 The contrast of leader to manager provides specific
qualities to the word leader. A manager, it is said, is concerned with the present and with keeping
the system intact; a manager is therefore suspicious of change. A leader by contrast is an idea
man, one who has a vision of the future and is interested in shaking up things. Above all, it is
said, a leader is concerned with “values.” People need meaning in their lives and the leader is
someone who knows how to provide that