THE PRIMARY DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A LEADER AND A MANAGER

Phuoc D. Nguyen

The primary difference between a leader and a manager which are a leader is always future-oriented, while a manager is always present- and past-oriented and he/she has little to pay his/her attention to the future. Great leaders are always orienting on the future, they think about the future most of the time, they think about where they are going to, but not where they are, they are looking for tomorrow’s opportunities and ignoring the issues of the past, they think about where their organization operates in the next several years, what their organization which has to do to make their aspirational future come true.

Thoms and Greenberger (1995) believe that “Different manager/leader tasks require different temporal skills. Some tasks, like visioning, planning, goal setting, and motivating are future-oriented tasks and will be performed by leaders who can warp time, create future schema, and predict. Other tasks, like performer evaluation and problem-solving, require leaders who can recapture the past.” (p. 286). Thoms and Greenberger (1995) classified indirectly future-oriented tasks and present – and past-oriented tasks. Nwankwo (2008) proposes “Present-fatalistic orientation reflects a predominantly helpless and hopeless stance toward life and the future in general. Zimbardo and Boyd suggest that an optimal time orientation is achieved by flexible transitions among temporal orientations that are most appropriate in each situation.” (p. 13). In fact, in small and mid-size companies, tasks of leadership and management should be flexibly transformed to incorporate the role of future-oriented leader, present-oriented leader, and past-oriented based on each specific situation.

Future-oriented leaders include positions of chair of the board of directors, board of directors members, CEO, vice presidents, heads of department, and heads of strategic business units. While chair of the board of directors, board of directors members, CEO, and vice presidents who participate in corporate strategy planning; CEO, vice presidents, heads of department, and heads of strategic business units who participate in business strategy planning; heads of department and heads of strategic business units who participate in functional strategies planning. Therefore, the type of responsibilities or tasks would be ideal for the present-oriented individual including section managers, coordinators, supervisors, specialists, and officers because they only take a little of their time for strategic planning, their primary role is to implement functional strategies.

Thoms (2004) proposes “As the name implies, present-oriented people live for the moment. Everything they do is related to the present. Depending on their individual temporal alignment, the ‘present’ may range from the past few days or weeks to the next few days or weeks or it could, literally, be today. They pay close attention to day-to-day activities. They know exactly what is going on in each aspect of their lives and they check regularly to maintain that information.” (p. 12). The above-mentioned time orientation classification is based on the roles of every position in the organizational structure. However, if we based on the time zone to classify time orientation it could show different results. For example, the chair of the board of directors who is orienting past-oriented individuals, the CEO who is orienting present-oriented individuals, the officer who is orienting future-oriented individuals, etc.