Leadership and Mangement are different skills...
... and their relationship is poorly understood.
For some time I have wanted to write a systematic work about the nature of leadership, the conditions in which it is most and least effective and, in particular, how it differs from, and is related to, management.
My general view is somewhat controversial as I conclude that we do not understand either the nature of leadership, its relationship with management or the attributes of leaders. Perhaps most contentiously I suggest that leaders cannot be manufactured out of managers and, other than in specific situations, their dominance can be counterproductive.
Transitional Events
The lifespan of all organizations, from states to companies, is shaped by the transitional events they encounter and their evolution is a function of the way they traverse them. Their success is determined by the efficiency with which the principal authority alternates between management (in stable times) and leadership (in transitional events).
I argue that success, in most arenas, is determined mainly by our accurate prediction of the onset of transitional events and the way in which we address them. I believe that we pay insufficient attention to this reality. We should expect the unexpected but habitually we do not.
We also have a tendency to deny and then to conceal the onset of these anxiety inducing turning points and this intransigence leads to the organisation we are dependent upon becoming maladapted to its operating environment and the adjustment that we eventually have to endure often takes the form of a crisis. These crises are the principal class of transitional events in which we seek leadership and they condition us, as followers, to be attracted to charismatic individuals who may be leaders or charlatans. Our limited understanding of what makes a leader renders us unable to discriminate.
I conclude that, regrettably, leadership cannot be taught except to enable individuals to ascertain that they do not possess the necessary intuitive assets. What can be and should be taught is how to be sensitive to the emergence of transitional events as it is they that shape the evolution of our world.