What’s the difference between management and leadership?

Managers direct people to achieve a goal. Leaders bring out the best in people and want their people to exceed them.

When my husband and I owned our restaurant we hired the best people, gave them what they needed to be successful, and then got out of their way so they could be awesome. I took this photo at our restaurant, that’s our logo on the upper left. The lady on the horse is the mom of one of our employees, she was riding her horse past our restaurant and stopped to say hi.

My philosophy comes from a Japanese historical drama that I watched on TV, I don’t speak Japanese, but the show had English subtitles. I’m going to try to make a long story as short as I can.

The wife of a fairly low-ranked samurai spent her life’s savings to buy her husband an amazing horse. When their lord, Oda Nobunaga, learned about the horse he wanted to see it.

In that scene in the show, Lord Oda was riding the horse in a ring while praising the horse, saying it was the best horse in all of Japan. The couple watched with sullen, helpless expressions like they thought Lord Oda was going to take the horse for himself.

Instead, Lord Oda said, “I am going to look so good with you on this horse.”

The couple, and even I, were like, “What?!”

Lord Oda said, “When people see you, my vassal, riding this horse, they are going to think such great things about me.”

Wow!

I don’t know how historically accurate that incident was portrayed in the show, but what I learned from it was when you let your employees be greater than you are, they make you look good.

That’s how I ran my restaurant: when my employees outshined me, I polished their shine.

Indeed, it made me look confident.

Many times I said, “I’m going to defer to my manager on this because she’s better at this than I am.”

People would say, “You’re the owner, shouldn’t your judgement prevail?”

I replied, “My judgement is that I should trust her judgement on this.”

To which most people said something like, “Wow! You’re a great owner!”

A friend said, “That’s the difference between management and leadership. You’re a leader.”

Now I coach leaders.

Additional:

If this post feels familiar, that's because I upcycled it from National Career Coach Day. And if you read that post too, thank you for following my blog! I hope it has been, and will continue to be, helpful for you. Soon, I will be looking for new clients at a considerable discount to help me continue rolling out my new life coaching program.

And since I'm a martial artist I want to point out in the photo of my employee's mom on her horse, please notice that her pants say Krav Maga. Not only does she practice Krav Maga, but she also does equine therapy. She's pretty awesome!