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Does your organization distinguish between management training and leadership development? In Western economies, more so than emerging markets, the lines between the two have become blurred.

As Joanna Kozubska, in her book, The Seven Keys of Charisma (1997), says: “There are times when a leader needs good, systematic management skills and times when a manager must inspire people. We have to be able to do both.” This has significant implications for the way that leaders and managers should be developed in mature markets.

The distinction between management training and leadership development arose because a consensus grew that management was about the issues of today, requiring efficient organization and implementation, whereas leadership was about the future and involved motivation, vision and managing change.

Since different skills were needed, discrete development solutions evolved to meet these needs. Training programs are now available to cover managerial tasks such as planning, organizing, staffing, reporting and budgeting. Often lead by a specialist, these can be finely tuned to meet the requirements of a particular participant population.

In contrast, leadership development programs often look not at the “what” of a manager’s role but rather the “how.” Typically, these programs will stem from one of the many different theories about leadership. Some of the key theories are:

• Situational Leadership
  Different circumstances require different forms of leadership
• Leadership Traits
  By examining the traits of great leaders, employees can copy and develop them
• Leadership Behavior
  Looking at what leaders do, rather than their traits; the theory is that if we can define successful leadership behavior, we can train others to replicate it in the workplace
• Authentic Leadership
  Encouraging leaders to be true to themselves and take unconditional responsibility
• Transactional Leadership
  The mutual benefit from an exchange-based relationship, where the leader offers certain things, such as resources or rewards, in return for the follower’s commitment
• Leader as a Hero
  The theory that leaders are born with innate, unexplainable skills and charisma; consequently, they are elevated to hero status
• Attribution
  Recognizing the importance of followership and concentrating on the factors which induce people to follow a particular leader
• Transformation
  Proactively motivating others to breed commitment not just compliance

Whichever model or training vehicle is used, the essential difference between management and leadership development is in the role of the facilitator. Management training requires the facilitator to remain very much in an instructor role, imparting new information to the participants. On the other hand, leadership development, because it focuses on the “how,” means that the facilitator has to actually facilitate, in the truest sense. He or she needs to create an environment where participants feel confident enough to articulate their development needs, examine how they can fulfill them and practice different approaches in order to close any gaps.

While leadership development had to rely on and reference managerial responsibility, management training did not need to reference leadership experience. An instructor could lead a successful, practical management session in isolation from any leadership capability or behavior. In other words, they could operate quite successfully in a leadership vacuum. This led to some participants seeing leadership development as something “for them upstairs” and not as something that was instrumental to their everyday operational tasks.

Fundamentally, leadership is proactive. Effective leaders anticipate problems and opportunities and they motivate and develop strategic responses. In contrast, management is reactive. When problems develop, managers respond. In the past, this was the key difference that was reflected in the way that leadership and management were developed. Now, the two are coming together.

This is predominantly because the role of a manager has changed. Today’s team managers have to process more data and react more swiftly than they did ten years ago. However, they are also charged with taking responsibility for the morale, well-being and development of their teams, something that was appreciated, but perhaps not expected before.

At the same time, there has been a cultural change in the expectations of employees. Managers may be responsible for the commercial aspect of their team’s performance; however, in achieving these goals, employees expect that the manager will behave not as a dictator, but as a colleague, not as the boss, but as a coach.

The simple truth is that today’s organizations no longer want managers who can maintain the status quo; they want leaders at all levels who can inspire individuals and the organization to greater success. That’s why focusing on the distinction between leadership and management development is a red herring.

Instead, organizations should be highlighting the link between managerial training interventions and leadership responsibility. The question now for those who work in people development is: when you build and structure management and leadership development programs, do you inadvertently reinforce the outmoded gap between the two concepts, or are you bringing the two together?