Leadership vs management

Side by side

The research label row is my own mapping, not Kotter's or Zaleznik's. The evidence section explains why it is only rough.

The definitions

Kotter. In "What Leaders Really Do", John Kotter writes that leadership is different from management, but not for the reasons most people think. It is not mystical, not about charisma, and not necessarily better than management or a replacement for it. Management is about coping with complexity; leadership, by contrast, is about coping with change. Both are necessary, and the real challenge is to combine strong leadership and strong management and use each to balance the other (Kotter, 2001, summary read).

Zaleznik. Abraham Zaleznik's "Managers and Leaders: Are They Different?", first published in 1977, draws the line around people rather than tasks. In the article's summary, managers' goals arise out of necessities rather than desires, and they excel at defusing conflicts while ensuring the organization's day-to-day business gets done; leaders adopt personal, active attitudes toward goals, look for opportunities and inspire subordinates. He argues that businesses need both managers and leaders to survive and succeed (Zaleznik, 2004, summary read).

The two authors frame the split differently. Kotter treats leadership and management as two complementary systems of action, and says companies can develop many people for leadership roles. Zaleznik writes of two very different types of people.

What the research says

None of the studies in the Evidence Library behind this site measures "leadership" against "management" as Kotter defines them. The closest large body of work compares transformational and transactional leadership. Mapping those onto Kotter's two words is a rough fit, but it is the evidence there is.

The two travel together. A meta-analysis of 626 correlations from 87 sources found an overall validity of .44 for transformational leadership and .39 for contingent reward, one of the transactional behaviors, while laissez-faire leadership was negatively related to outcomes (-.37). Transformational leadership and contingent reward correlated with each other at .80, and for several criteria contingent reward had stronger relations than transformational leadership did (Judge & Piccolo, 2004, rated Medium in the Evidence Library from its abstract). These are pooled correlations. Leaders rated high on one tended to be rated high on the other, and for several criteria the transactional behavior had stronger relations than transformational leadership.

Both can be trained. In a large randomized field experiment, public and private leaders were assigned to a control group or to transformational, transactional or combined leadership training. Employee responses from 463 organizations, including schools, daycare centers and bank units, showed that the training could change leadership behavior in very different organizations (Jacobsen et al., 2022, rated High from its abstract). For the subsample of school principals there was some evidence of effects on test and exam performance; that subsample result is rated Medium.

Neither study tests Kotter's claim that leadership matters more as change speeds up. That remains his argument, not a measured finding.

How it maps to the Unfrozen Loop

1. Week 0
   Before you start
2. 1
   Surface both ways
3. 2
   Make sense together, top included
4. 3
   Start it close to the work

   Part 3 asks the manager to plan the rollout, trial it small, check how it is going and remove obstacles. In Kotter's terms that is management and leadership in the same job.

5. 4
   Review on a rhythm, then hold the pace

   The review rhythm is the managing half of leading a change. The Loop says to keep reviews running. That gains may fade when support stops is only a hint, from one trial of a leadership program, read from its abstract.

6. 5
   The middle’s own weather
7. Ring
   Safe to speak, and speaking changes something

Highlighted parts are the ones this idea speaks to. The mapping is my reading, not a tested finding. See the whole Loop and the evidence for each part.