Is it better to be a good leader or a good manager? To excel you have to be both.

Frank has his organization on a tight leash. Everyone knows their job because it has been well described for them, when they are to do it and how they are to do it.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The year is laid out on paper, the budgeting process flows from the top down based on company goals and is approved by everyone involved and put into place. Targets, pay, bonuses and marketing expenditures are set by Frank and passed by everyone for agreement.

Once the budget is finished, then monthly and quarterly goals are set, pay and bonuses are set, and everyone has a document that they agreed to, that they will be measured by and be paid by.

When all is said and done, Frank has a system where he has done the best possible job of solving problems before the fact. He and his group will be safe and successful barring economic upheaval (which he cannot be responsible for). People like working for Frank because of his relaxed, plan-ahead approach to things. But some of his people wish they had more say and that all the decisions weren't made at the top.

Ann, on the other hand, wants very much to be successful, doesn't care as much about being safe, and has her group organized mostly around the strengths of people. She looks for strengths in people and tries to build a job for this person that will fit. She spends a lot of time getting to know her people to find out what they dream of, because she thinks that if she can relate their job to this, they will be more successful, and thus the company will be, too.

Her budgeting process flows from the bottom up. She considers everyone's ideas when setting targets, pay, bonuses, etc. When all is said and done, Ann will have a budget that will reflect what she expects to accomplish this year, but she expects that creative outbursts from her group will put them over the top.

Ann would rather be talking about a new idea than "performance versus budget" any day. People like working for Ann because it's exciting, changing all the time and mostly because they know that Ann is looking out for them and that if she is successful they will be successful. Some wish that it was a little more organized.

A good manager is clearly the guy in the top box of an organizational chart and he has programmed and planned everything for everybody else in every box of the chart. Little is left to chance. There is usually not much room for change.

A good leader thinks more about the people than the boxes. By getting to know each contributor well and appealing to their sense of "let's win together" she gets the highest level of work out of the team. Some of the less creative get left in the dust.

So how do we who are responsible for companies and growth resolve this? Perhaps we should use the phrase often used to spell out the difference between the two ideas as our definition of what is desired:

We manage things and we lead people. We call this process "management."

If you can't organize all the things in your business life, you will be a sloppy manager. If you can't get the involvement and happy hard work from your group, yours will be a dull place to work.

A good manager wears both hats: at times organizing things for the most effective results for the company, at other times helping the company's people be as successful as possible, ensuring their best work and the company's success.

Pat Wiesner is the retired CEO of WiesnerMedia, publisher of ColoradoBiz. He still leads sales training for the company. Read this and Wiesner's past columns on the Web at cobizmag.com or e-mail him at [e-mail]