Great Leader vs Good Manager

[The Stranger]

What is the difference (or what are the traits of a great leader and that of a good manager)? And if you had to choose, which one would you prefer to be in charge of your country.

(To give a direction and to hint at what I think myself, let's say respectively Alexander the Great vs Emperor Augustus)

[Papewaio]

Leadership is from the front. It political often means being the first to do something that is needed but not neccesarily popular. A good leader is often up in front, leading the charge and waving the flag.

Management is about aligning people and other resources to resolve an issue. You don't need to identify it, be an expert or the first. A good manager does it efficiently and effectively often without people noticing they were managed.

[The Stranger]

Maybe I used the wrong word for manager, maybe administrator is a better word for it? I'm not sure, in dutch we have the word Leider (leader) and Bestuurder (?). What I miss in your description of management is the aspect of making policy (laws etc), which imo a manager doesn't neccesarily have to do.

[Fragony]

Augustus was in charge without looking as if he was in charge, he at least pretended succesfully to be a man of concensus.

[The Stranger]

Here's some things I was thinking about

Great leader
-Inspires others (to follow him)
-Leads others on a path of his chosing (even though some leaders make it look like the people do the chosing)
-Sets the example

Good managers/admininstrators
-Pretty much all the things pape said
+ I think good managers/administrators should also make the tough call and do something unpopular
-Good at delegating tasks to people better suited for the job

Some differences
Great leaders can also lead their people to their own doom, while good managers/administrators don't (if they would, they would no longer be a good manager/administrator). There is greatness in evil, but I think we would be (atleast nowadays) less inclined to call a manager/admin good if he didnt also adhere to some moral standard in his policy making. Great leaders bind people to their person, while good managers/admins bind people to their function, this makes the succesion easier for good managers/admins but also makes them easier to replace (not neccesarily by a better one, but just by anyone).

[Rhyfelwyr]

Administrative skills are part of being a great leader, along with their authority, command and piety skills.

[The Lurker Below]

Great leaders have full beards, good ideas, and are smart enough to hire great managers to take care of business.

Great managers have handlebar mustaches, carry a big whip, and are smart enough to stay out of the line of fire, hiding behind great leaders.

[Fragony]

Administrative skills are part of being a great leader, along with their authority, command and piety skills.

Well yes but that is the difference he's asking for no, what's a manager and what's a leader.

[Sarmatian]

Well yes but that is the difference he's asking for no, what's a manager and what's a leader.

Frags, it M2TW character skills.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

A classic bone of contention.

Old theory on leadership was "trait" centered -- i.e. that leaders were born leaders. This research is mostly pooh-poohed today.

More recent research suggests that leadership is a product of the interaction of the leader's skills (mostly communication-centered) and the particular situation faced by the collective in question. So, a charismatic "my way or the highway" type could work very well for a nascent organization founding a new industry, but would fit poorly for an established organization trying to control costs in a mature industry during tough economic times.

Most folks enjoy charismatic leadership and the sense of "being on a mission" with an "energetic team" -- think NASA during the Moon Race or Alexander's campaign prior to the destruction of Persia. The problem with this approach to leadership is that it does not institionalize well. Weber, for example, downgraded charismatic leadership heavily in favor of the ratio-legal rules approach of the bureaucracy. Weber did this not because charismatic leaders couldn't lead, but because there was no stability -- if the leader no longer had a good answer for the situation or if the leader became ill, everything could come apart.

The problem is that there are very few leaders who are well-skilled at being a charismatic leader, but then fully capable of shifting categories and enacting/enabling appropriate institutions to handle the changed situation generated by their own earlier leadership success. Some leaders are so skilled in both areas that they can make such a transition (Caessr Dictator likely could have aside from that problem with steel poisoning; Buonaparte was also a brilliant administrator whose law code is still in use). Other leaders seeking this transition must no when to back off/share leadership with other's whose talents are different (Augustus' genius was mostly bureaucratic, but he had won the loyalty of a charismatic leader of troops, Agrippa, to handle those things he didn't do as well).

[HoreTore]

Great leaders are for fascists.

Hand me that manager, please.

[Fragony]

Frags, it M2TW character skills.

Stupidious Me (inc)

[Brenus]

A good leader leads you to war.
A good manager explains you why you go to war~D

[Rhyfelwyr]

Great leaders are for fascists.

Hand me that manager, please.

Ever see the film Brazil?

[Ironside]

Great leaders are for fascists.

Hand me that manager, please.

I was thinking something similar actually, or to formulate it a bit more: Facism likes to appeal to charisma.

And to go into it a bit more a good manager with charisma is a really great leader, so it's the charisma where the big difference are. So authority tied to the person and the abillity to make people respect and follow you.

I'll take the one with manager skills 4 times out 5 and the exceptions are when you're in desperate need for someone to drive a change, rather than simply going with flow skillfully. And those times when the leader knows how to delegate at least one really important person.

[Kadagar_AV]

Great leader minus charisma gives you a good manager?

[HopAlongBunny]

A great leader promises you heaven on earth a great manager makes it happen?

[Ironside]

Great leader minus charisma gives you a good manager?

No, but charisma is the heavy weight trait due to how people normally looks at it. If you got both, you're a great leader, not a good manager in how you're usually described, but you can have horrible managing skills and still be a great leader.

[Kadagar_AV]

A great leader promises you heaven on earth a great manager makes it happen?

A good manager can use resources to their full ability, a great leader inspires people to reach their full ability.

[Ironside]

A good manager can use resources to their full ability, a great leader inspires people to reach their full ability.

Now we are going into what defines a great leader in this thread. Doing a godwin, Hitler was a charismatic, evil leader with poor managment skills (thankfully) and with poor judgement. So depending on what constitutes "great" in this context, your quote works or not.

Do anybody got a charismatic leader with notable poor managment and poor judgement so I can pick another example btw? Or one with simply poor managment.

[Kadagar_AV]

Now we are going into what defines a great leader in this thread. Doing a godwin, Hitler was a charismatic, evil leader with poor managment skills (thankfully) and with poor judgement. So depending on what constitutes "great" in this context, your quote works or not.

Do anybody got a charismatic leader with notable poor managment and poor judgement so I can pick another example btw? Or one with simply poor managment.


Hitler was pretty damn good at management, untill drug abuse kicked in, IIRC..

Genghis Khan is probably the leader I would think of first, if you want examples. He was just a great leader in any way you measure it.

Ghandi is another example, of course :)

[Ironside]

Hitler was pretty damn good at management, untill drug abuse kicked in, IIRC..

Genghis Khan is probably the leader I would think of first, if you want examples. He was just a great leader in any way you measure it.

Ghandi is another example, of course :)

The nazi goverment departments were intentionally provoked into competing with eachother on the same assignments and things like that, keeping them from full effectivity. There's a reason why Albert Speer could increase production that much. Part of the reason was also that competition sideways avoids union upwards.

Genghis is the poster boy for successful pragmatic evil. The examples I'm searching for are more of a paper tigers. Charismatic leader, but things are already falling apart or falls apart when the leader dies more or less expected (so things falling apart after Alexander dying at age 32 isn't counted against him on managment).

Getting way too many enemies counts as poor judgement (so Frederik of Sicily is an example of high charisma, good management, poor judgement) and/or critical failure of reaching your goals (so Gandhi got good judgement, high charisma, unknown management).

[Kadagar_AV]

Government departments competing against each other on the same assignments - a bad thing? Why?

Maybe that way we get results from politicians?

Genghis... I think you have propaganda-glasses on when you read about him. Realpolitik would describe him way better than "evil".

Sure, he totally crushed some cities. Pretty much for the same reasons USA used nuclear weapons against civilian cities. To hinder greater loss of lives. But don't forget the good things he did, IE, letting spokespersons from EVERY religion freely and openly debate. The first secular society in history IIRC.

I guess Kim Jong Ill is the example you are looking for. Charismatic but obviously a poor manager, and things started to fall apart as soon as he got the power.

[Ironside]

Government departments competing against each other on the same assignments - a bad thing? Why?
Maybe that way we get results from politicians?

Wrong type of competition. It's more like those evil superwarrior programs that you train 50 people and 49 ends up killed. Yes that 1 guy is the best, but those 50 together is still better. It's also prone to have destructive competition, by making it cutthroat personal, aka winning a race by shooting all others in the leg. That was encouraged behavior, in practice at least.

Also, the boon of large bureaucracies are freedom of information (so a good idea will be shared) and removal of redundant parts. Now think that the US and Soviet would share their intelligence departments. They'll get better intel and could remove a lot of now redundant stuff. Agreed? It's would also be totally insane to work with the enemy.

The size of the departments are also an issue. We're talking old oligopol markets here, where the state funds both the winner and the loser. We aren't talking school A vs B, but district A vs B. A wins, eats B. Now you need to break up A again to create A and C.

Competition works best on a smaller scale, where destructive competition is forbidden and the cost of the losers can be simply hidden away under unemployment.


Genghis... I think you have propaganda-glasses on when you read about him. Realpolitik would describe him way better than "evil".

Sure, he totally crushed some cities. Pretty much for the same reasons USA used nuclear weapons against civilian cities. To hinder greater loss of lives. But don't forget the good things he did, IE, letting spokespersons from EVERY religion freely and openly debate. The first secular society in history IIRC.

Pragmatic evil. Using a much crueler method than usual for the time to terrify the enemy into submission. The siege of Bagdad is a very clear punishment expedition as well. That doesn't make him puppy-kicking evil for the funs. The US nuking would be comparable if cities were fairly spared by all participants, which they weren't.

And sure he was a good manager (meritocratic thinking goes under that). Very few cruel managers are good ones.


I guess Kim Jong Ill is the example you are looking for. Charismatic but obviously a poor manager, and things started to fall apart as soon as he got the power.

Not sure, I've gotten that the personality cult has more to do with heiritage and propaganda rather than his own charisma. His father Kim Il-sung might work though.

[Kadagar_AV]

Ah, sorry, I meant the original Crazy-Kim. My bad :)

As for the rest, I think you have some to learn about how humanity works. We need more guns to the head these days, not less :)

[Paradox]

[delete ]

[Ironside]

Genghis was a nation-builder, and an Imperialistic mind of the "best" sort. Truly, between him and Alexander, you have the blue-print for all great imperialists in history--not only in terms of what they did, but in terms of what they represented (humanity forced to come to terms with itself through force). Given how many have tried to walk in the foot-steps of such people, it is short-sighted and narrow-minded to call it evil. Certainly there is a place for that kind of thinking, even in a liberal-democratic future.

Sigh, he was talented nationbuilder indeed, but to neglect that the Mongols were unusually cruel for it's time during the conquest phase and used fear as a weapon, isn't exactly something you can ignore.

I would still call an amazing reformative China evil if they nuke Tokyo and New Deli to prove what happens to those who resist, evil. Or why not NY and Washington? Unless our next imperiaistic world conquerer comes from the US, they will "disappear" in such a scenario (since the US will resist).

Or is this one of the cases when I say evil, the brain shuts down, because evil people can never be long term succeessful, never be admired in any way and never do something good?

Realpolitik "refers to politics or diplomacy based primarily to power and on practical and material factors and considerations, rather than ideological notions or moralistic or ethical premises" (wiki). What would be the textbook for pragmatic evil anyone? "As above, but mean about it".

I can take another word for it, but it should be calling a spade a spade, not hide behind "political correctness".

[The Stranger]

Hitler was pretty damn good at management, untill drug abuse kicked in, IIRC..

Genghis Khan is probably the leader I would think of first, if you want examples. He was just a great leader in any way you measure it.

Ghandi is another example, of course :)

But Ghandi was not a manager, right? Or atleast he did not get the chance to prove it.

What about Nelson Mandela?

As for leaders who were great at leading, but worse or bad at administrating (but were still in charge of a nation) what about Richard Lionheart? Charles VIII of France?

[Noncommunist]

But Ghandi was not a manager, right? Or atleast he did not get the chance to prove it.

What about Nelson Mandela?

As for leaders who were great at leading, but worse or bad at administrating (but were still in charge of a nation) what about Richard Lionheart? Charles VIII of France?

Atilla or Tamerlane? Their empires collapsed after their deaths but were pretty expansive.

[a completely inoffensive name]

In my mind a good leader is someone who can get a country or a group of people to move in a singular direction. A good manager is someone who can actually maintain that movement.

This sounded a lot better in my head, but I hope you guys get the point. The defining characteristic of a leader is to inspire and win hearts and minds. The defining characteristic of a manager is....I don't how else to put it but conflict deterrence? Good managers are the ones that can get people to work together in harmony (more or less) for extended periods of time and that in and of itself is way different than simply getting everyone to agree on something.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

In my mind a good leader is someone who can get a country or a group of people to move in a singular direction. A good manager is someone who can actually maintain that movement.

This sounded a lot better in my head, but I hope you guys get the point. The defining characteristic of a leader is to inspire and win hearts and minds. The defining characteristic of a manager is....I don't how else to put it but conflict deterrence? Good managers are the ones that can get people to work together in harmony (more or less) for extended periods of time and that in and of itself is way different than simply getting everyone to agree on something.

Conflict Management. After all, you cannot avoid conflict (indeed certain aspects of it are healthy for decision making), but handling it adroitly is a great management skill.