One day when my colleagues and I were meeting with our managing partner, I remember being admonished: “You lead people and you manage systems and things.” That was more than 25 years ago, and we have been bombarded with leadership from all sides ever since.

Just recently, though, I was reminded that leadership is more of an art and management is more of a science. What’s more, I sort of got the idea that the “art” was more important than the “science.” Maybe it is. For instance, I have a hard time with a leader who may create a great vision for the future, yet doesn’t have the skills to organize the workforce, plan the work, influence the workforce, and execute the plan.

In fact, I believe that we may have allowed the pendulum to swing so far toward leadership that we have not been teaching our aspiring leaders how to manage themselves and the people they lead. Isn’t management the foundation of good leadership? Isn’t managing yourself well so you can be effective and efficient necessary to become a great leader?

Leadership skills are clearly very important in business. If you can’t create a vision and get others to see that vision and buy into making it a reality, it doesn’t matter how effective and efficient you are. If you can’t successfully and positively influence the people in the organization, no matter how well you execute you won’t produce the results necessary for success.

Bottom line: we need both leadership and management. Great leaders must have a skill set that includes managing themselves and their organization. And they must have great leadership skills to gain the energy and excitement of the people in the organization.

Management is planning, influencing, organizing, and controlling. There are two sets of management skills: managing yourself and managing others. When it comes to managing yourself, we are talking about planning, influencing, controlling, and organizing you. It is about being organized, having the discipline to stick with a task until it is complete, and setting high-quality standards for your work product and for yourself. It also must include integrity.

The following table shows some of the key skills within each management skill set.

Table 1. Management Skill Sets

How Are Your Management Skills? 

What are we to do about this need for management skills? There are two things you should consider: 

1. Make sure your current leaders have good positive management skills and use them to lead by example. 

2. Leaders are responsible for developing the people they lead and the people need to be taught management skills early in their career. 

But first things first. How are your management skills? Are there skills you need to work on improving for your own benefit and to help you and the people you lead by example today? 

Take the following assessment and draw your own conclusions, then set up your own development plan. (More than three yes answers probably means you need a development plan.) After all, we can only worry about things we have control over and the only real thing we control is ourselves. 

Management Skill Assessment