The Difference Between Leadership and Being a Leader

When I first became a manager, I was still trying to prove I was good at my job.

No one ever told me the job had changed. There was no conversation about how success would now look different, or how the skills that had gotten me promoted wouldn’t be the ones I needed next. So I kept doing what had always worked for me - I focused on output, on being right, on doing the work well, and I expected others to follow.

They didn’t.

At the time, I thought the problem was them. I was constantly disappointed, and it took me a while to realize the truth: I was the problem. I was performing, not leading. And it’s no surprise, because most of us are promoted into leadership for being good at our jobs, not for being ready to lead people.

Early in your career, there’s a path most of us assume is natural. You join a company, do good work, get promoted, and repeat the cycle until you become a Manager or a Leader. It’s aspirational. It signals that you’ve “made it.” With the title comes status - people take you more seriously, and you’re held in higher regard by peers and prospective employers.

For a long time, I didn’t question that path. In fact, I was confused by the people who didn’t want it. While working in staffing, that confusion became institutionalized. If someone had been in their career for 5+ years and hadn’t been promoted to manager, it was quietly assumed they weren’t very good at their job. They were deemed too senior to be an individual contributor yet had never been ‘trusted’ to manage.

Over a decade later, looking back, that thinking is ridiculous.

Today, the opposite is true for me. The people who either fear or simply don’t want to manage others are often the best people to employ. They know their own mind. They understand their strengths. And they aren’t chasing a title.

When I ask people why they haven’t chosen leadership as a path, their answers are usually simple: “Because I like the work I’m doing, and becoming a leader means I won’t get to do that anymore.” That kind of self-awareness is rare and deeply honest.

Leadership is a role.
Being a leader is a responsibility.

Many of us step into leadership because it feels like the next step, or because we want to help others grow. But helping isn’t leading, it’s mentoring. And don’t get me wrong, mentorship is incredibly valuable, but leadership asks for something else entirely.

Leading isn’t about having the answers. It’s about setting direction when there isn’t one. It’s about letting people sit in discomfort instead of rushing to give them answers. It’s about absorbing uncertainty so others don’t have to. It’s about making decisions that won’t always make you popular but will make things clearer.

This is where most people struggle - because none of this is rewarded early in your career. We’re rewarded for output, for expertise, for being right. Leading asks you to step away from that comfort and into something far messier.

Real leadership, I’ve learned, starts much later than the promotion. It starts when you stop measuring success by how well you perform, and start measuring it by how safe, clear, and motivated the people around you feel.

Not everyone wants that responsibility and that isn’t a failure.

But stepping into it without understanding what it demands of you is.