“What is your major responsibility?” I asked a new manager.

“Representing my team to upper management,” he replied.

“Do you make suggestions about what you want your team to accomplish or how you should adapt to changes?”

“No. I listen to my people and try to become their voice.”

Facilitating managers listen, gather input, and represents their team’s perspective upward. Facilitators accept 80-90% of their team’s ideas, receive more phone calls than they make, and initiate less than 10% change.  Facilitation is a valuable skill, but their teams provide the leadership while the manager merely transmits it.

By contract initiators take team input but contribute 70-80% of ideas that shape direction, send 2-3 times more communications than they receive, and make 80-90% of decisions available to the team especially when an issue contradicts the team’s comfort zone.

Leaders listen, but they do not outsource leadership to the team. They shape direction, set standards, and move people toward outcomes that matter because leadership is an initiating role, not a reactive one.

Former First Lady Rosalynn Carter captured the distinction well, “A great leader takes people where they don’t necessarily want to go, but ought to be.”