Are You a Boss or a Leader?

“The best leader is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and the self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it.” – Theodore Roosevelt

We’ve all worked for bosses and we’ve all worked with leaders, but few people in positions of authority spend enough time thinking about the differences between the two roles. At a glance they seem similar, but they are deeply and profoundly different. Bosses can be leaders, but they aren’t necessarily. The same goes for leaders. They can be bosses, but they might not be.

You can be a leader at your company or organization even if no one reports to you. Alternatively, you can be a boss who rules by fear and is followed by no one.

Martin Luther King, Jr., was a civil rights leader, but he wasn’t anyone boss. People followed him voluntarily. He was on the side of justice. He was charismatic. He inspired millions of people, and he changed the world.

During the war in Iraq, General David Petraeus didn’t order men and women into battle from an air conditioned office. He went onto the streets of Baghdad and Baqubah and risked his life alongside them. He was a commander—a boss—but he was also a leader.

Richard Branson is the boss of plenty of people at his various Virgin Group companies, but he’s also a genuine leader who inspires his employees with his own thirteen leadership principles. Who wouldn’t want to follow a leader who believes in the following?

1. A good leader should be genuinely interested in people and strive to see the best in them.
2. To succeed in business you need to build a great team around you that believe in what you are doing.
3. If you praise people, they flourish. Always look for a way to praise your team.
4. Leadership requires knowing how to delegate and how to be a good listener.
5. A leader should promote people above what they expect. This demonstration of trust often causes them to excel.
6. A successful business comes from creating something that makes a difference to other people’s lives.
7. You can identify a gap in the market by asking yourself how you can do what others are already doing – better.
8. Go for quality, make sure you are the best in what you do otherwise it’s pointless. Create something you can be proud of.
9. Always be prepared for the worst that can happen. This will help turn adversity into success.
10. Starting a business is tough, but you have to fight for its survival.
11. Don’t treat your bank like your GP, be ready to switch to get the support you need to ensure your business succeeds.
12. There is no point launching a product unless you can get the word out about it. Free PR is one of the best ways to do this.
13. Get the details right

The ultimate bad boss is a tossup between Kevin Spacey’s character in Swimming with Sharks and Meryl Streep’s character in The Devil Wears Prada. Both of those films were successful—and their characters unforgettable—because only the luckiest among us gets through life without working for a real-life version of one of these horrible characters at least once.

Don’t get the wrong idea. Not all bosses are bad, even if they aren’t leaders. There are, however, some key differences.

Leaders inspire and motivate. Bosses give orders.

Leaders give pep talks. Bosses say, “or else.”

Leaders teach. Bosses simply expect.

Leaders assist. Bosses micromanage.

Leaders listen to and respect their employees and followers. Bosses say, “my way or the highway.”

The best bosses are leaders. The worst bosses never are.

It’s much easier to be a boss than a leader. If you’re hired as a supervisor or manager, if you do your job, you’re a boss. That’s all there is to it. Genuinely inspiring and motivating people, convincing them to follow you voluntarily—that’s much more difficult to pull off. Not everybody can do it.

It’s essential, though, that supervisors, managers, and CEOs at least aim to be leaders rather than bosses if they truly want their companies and organizations to succeed. Ruling with brazen authority and fear doesn’t work any better in the business world than it does in North Korea. Sam Walton got it right when he said, “outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it’s amazing what they can accomplish.”