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Managing Versus Leading in Today's Environment

By Jeff Brainard Vice President, Hospitality & Sales, Southern Management Companies | January 2025

Since 2020, the evolution of the workplace and workforce has been dynamic. There have been dozens of changes to the previous operating environment, which included regulatory, demand, supply chain, economic, and more.

Some of the more significant impacts have been in the location of personnel – on-site, remote, hybrid, etc. with the needs of this workforce changing dramatically from the workforce needs of the past. In other cases, changes in the various roles needed and even the number of team members employed have shifted managers’ focus into areas they had not previously supported. An area that has changed dramatically, regardless of industry, is team members’ individual needs and priorities, whose work-life balance is completely different compared to 2019 and earlier. The modification of employees’ needs outside of work has had the most impactful change on the way that managers and leaders work in their organizations.

Through this rapid evolution in workplace change, the dynamic and style of management and leadership have had to change. While this process is ongoing, the changing needs of the workplace have outpaced the adaptation of leadership in most cases. It is, therefore, important to understand the difference between management and leadership. While the terms have been used interchangeably, they are uniquely different roles (despite some potential overlap).

According to Harvard Business School Professor John Kotter, “Leadership is the creation of positive, non-incremental change, including the creation of a vision to guide that change – a strategy – the empowerment of people to make the vision happen despite obstacles, and the creation of a coalition of energy and momentum that can move that change forward.”

Per Webster’s Dictionary, the definition of management is “the process of dealing with or controlling things or people.” Joe Fuller, a Harvard Business School Professor, states, “Management is getting the confused, misguided, unmotivated, and misdirected to accomplish a common purpose on a regular, recurring basis.” According to Fuller, “the ultimate intersection between leadership and management is an appreciation for what motivates and causes individuals to behave the way they do, and the ability to draw out the best of them with a purpose in mind.”

My personal view on leadership is more straightforward. The difference between a leader and a manager, to me, is one word – FOLLOWERS. Team members have a choice to follow a leader, be inspired by their mission, process, and vision, and take steps to help bring their leader’s vision to life. With a manager, direct reports can hope their manager has the leadership qualities and effectiveness to connect, inspire, teach, guide, and lead but, even without that, the manager has the power to direct, and a team member’s choices in action are finite.

When looking at this dynamic from an organizational basis, a company or group can operate for some time without a leader, but it cannot operate at all without managers. Leadership generally looks at the longer term, aligning followers to support the organization’s vision and communicate this vision and an overall strategy to the entire organization or group. Leaders aren’t leaders necessarily by title, but through purpose and expression of vision. Managers help align and execute, and while being an effective or good manager requires similar leadership skills in communication, empathy, organizational skills, etc., the hierarchy and organization largely determine direction and goals.

As we enter 2025, it is important to look at the evolution of management over the past three to four years as business has returned from COVID shutdowns and regulations. As business returned, the workforce was shattered with significant shifts in employment in industries some of which, namely hospitality, still have not recovered. Managers shifted from directing, guiding, and teaching to doing while still maintaining management responsibilities. This shift changed the dynamic in many offices, and as the team members returned (in the office or remotely), managers had to figure out how to extricate themselves from “doing” and then learn that the current needs of their workforce had significantly changed. Through this transition, managers have taken a greater focus on building and enhancing culture, leaning in with leadership to help ensure alignment with the leadership vision. This shift has, in many cases, brought organizational leadership and mid- and entry-level managers closer to each other than ever before.

A new impact to managing is handling team dynamics when a portion, or sometimes all, of the workforce is remote. Handling team morale, project management, interoffice communication, and conflict have presented new challenges. In addition, the more recent reintegration of former remote workers to the office or shifting to part-time/hybrid roles is causing even more pressure on managers. New relationship dynamics, coverage hours, work travel, and even dress codes are looked at differently, and the need for managers to have emotional intelligence (EI) training is critical. All this to say that management has evolved from largely managing processes and tasks to truly managing people and working with their individual needs to work within processes to complete required tasks.

There have been countless works on managing and leadership. One of my favorites is The Art of Managing People by Tony Alessandra. In it, he talks about understanding the differences between people and behaving accordingly. The greatest difference in management today is balancing deliverables and culture to maintain performance. As Fuller noted, management requires “…accomplishing a common purpose on a regular, recurring basis.” Our job as managers is to take a team that is now fractured in location, drive, focus, and priorities to perform as effectively as they did when there was a team dynamic and support in a localized environment. The reduction of in-person communication, as there was prior to COVID, and the push for remote work forces managers to connect with their teams in a different way…. but not necessarily a better one.

Mark Perna wrote an article for Forbes in October 2024 discussing – Four Reasons Why It’s Getting Harder to Be a Successful Manager. In it, he noted that since last year, 81% of upper-level managers have more direct reports, 71% have increased workloads, 60% report feeling overwhelmed, and more than half of managers report their mental well-being has deteriorated. These factors highlight the difficulties that managers are experiencing, and the challenges seem greater than ever before. Still, there is hope!

Management has always been about the art of balance. Balancing the needs of the team with that of the organization. As external pressures grow on both the managers and team members as individuals, organizational pressures have continued with rising costs and increasing demand in many markets. A critical item for managers today is their need for EI and a firm grasp on leadership’s vision to set a clear and positive path forward.

As organizational leadership responds to changing pressures on managers and team members, individual leaders must look inward and understand how their teams need to be led now. Leaders must relate with managers and their teams, understand the pressures on both, and shape their messaging to steer the organization effectively. What is not talked about enough is that the best leaders can be effective managers, while not all managers make effective leaders. There are exceptions to all cases, but the best leaders in today’s economy are the ones who can effectively communicate and relate to their teams and the external pressures they face.

Similar to managers, organizational leaders have been forced to step into greater “doer” roles, in some cases, to save their businesses. With this new knowledge of their team, business dynamic, regulatory change, and customer demands, the best leaders are refining their visions to talk both long-term and assist management in identifying the steps and processes to lead their organizations forward.

The best leaders in today’s workplaces have been able to maintain their visions but enhance their reach through effective adaptation of culture. Through manipulation of goals and paths, leaders have removed some pressure from managers by focusing on intermittent steps and allowing flexibility in processes. Through the power of persuasion and an understanding of where their own skills stop and start, leaders are looking to those transitional managers and away from transactional ones to help bridge the communication gap within a changing workforce.

Another distinguishing characteristic of successful leadership that is different in today’s workplace is the renewed importance of emotional connectivity between leaders and their followers. While this has always been important, the pressure on management to accomplish regular daily tasks has increased so much that the messaging, at times, has been lost or diluted due to operational needs. The ability for leaders to connect directly through personal communication, improved internal messaging, video, and personal visits has never been more important. This is the only way to gain essential feedback from a team that no longer has the daily energy derived from a localized team environment. The need for belonging in an organization has never been higher. That element will continue to grow but from a greater connection to vision and purpose instead of the personal daily connections made at work. Leaders need to ensure that the culture continues to adapt to support the workforce’s emotional needs and new business demands.

The demands on culture and engagement are putting historic upward pressure on organizations, and it is not enough to acknowledge it. The ability for leaders to accept feedback and show, through actions, that meaningful and appropriate change will happen is essential. Organizations need both effective managers and engaged leaders more than ever before, and while their roles are essentially the same, the path to success has vastly changed for both.

Mr. Brainard

Jeff Brainard is a hospitality professional with nearly 30 years of experience spanning six states and Washington, D.C. He currently serves as vice president, hospitality for Southern Management Companies, overseeing the company's hotels and a resort. Mr. Brainard leads operations, sales, marketing, tenant relations, and revenue management operations including a team of 400 full-time employees and an additional 700 seasonal staff. Mr. Brainard guides his managers to succeed in their roles by maintaining a strong and productive work culture. He participated in the creation and development of "Destination Earth," Destination Hotel's green program designed to reduce properties' carbon footprints and improve operational efficiency. In addition, during COVID-19, he led the creation of "Ever Strong and Event Strong" Southern Management's comprehensive COVID-19 response program. Mr. Brainard believes it is critically important to teach both strategic and tactical planning for property leaders to adapt to an ever-changing environment of guest and group expectations and demand factors. Extended Biography & Contact Information

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The following is the Privacy Policy for HotelExecutive

We can be reached via telephone, email, or online at our contact page. When you visit our site we do not log any information regarding your domain or email address. Information Sharing: We do not share user information with any third parties other than via press release distribution as described below.

Hotel Newswire is a newswire service that distributes press releases on behalf of our users. If you decide to submit a press release for distribution through our system we will transmit your entire press release including any personal information therein contained to our media contacts and online distribution points including search engines. This is the only redistribution of your information that we engage in. Your submission of press releases through our system indicates consent with this policy. The information we collect during your registration process is used to notify users about updates to our service and inform users of any special events hosted by Hotel Newswire. This information is not shared with other organizations for commercial or non-commercial purposes.

Cookies: Our system requires the use of cookies to enable the user to log back into our website to access information from the newswire, without having to log in each time using the required username and password.

If you do not want to receive email from us in the future, please let us know by following instructions included in our communication with you. Users who supply us with telephone numbers online may receive telephone contact from us regarding their account, or informing them of new products and services available on the HotelExecutive website. If you do not wish to receive such telephone calls, please edit your account and remove your phone number from your account profile. This can be done from your user account menu.

Ad Servers: We do not partner with or have any relationship with any ad server companies. From time to time, we may use customer information for new uses not previously disclosed in our privacy notice. If our information practices change at any time, we will post the policy changes to our website to notify you of these changes and provide you with the ability to opt out of these new uses. If you are concerned about how your information is used, you should check back at our website periodically.

Upon request we provide site visitors with access to all information (including proprietary information) that we maintain about them. Users can access this information by logging in to their account.

Security: We always use industry-standard encryption technologies while transferring and receiving user data exchanged with our site. We have appropriate security measures in place in our physical facilities to protect against the loss, misuse, or alteration of information that we have collected from you on our site. We do not store credit card information in our systems.

If you feel that this site is not following its stated information policy, you may contact us.