Leadership for the Rest of Us
Seeing what is not there yet while managing what is right in front of you
Leadership requires two things: a vision of the world that does not yet exist and the ability to communicate it. Our vision is the world we imagine, the tangible results of what the world would look like if we spent every day in pursuit of our WHY. Leaders don’t have all the great ideas; they provide support for those who want to contribute. Leaders achieve very little by themselves; they inspire people to come together for the good of the group. Leaders never start with what needs to be done. Leaders start with WHY we need to do things.
I like this quote from Simon Sinek because it names two core responsibilities of a leader.
A leader takes responsibility for seeing a future that does not yet exist.
A leader takes responsibility for communicating that future in a way people can actually understand and act on.
Most of the time, leadership seems to be mostly framed around the person at the very top. The senior pastor. The CEO. The general. The head coach. But most of us, the other 99 percent, lead from the middle. We report up and we lead down. Some of us have one person who looks to us. Others have several teams. All of that is real leadership. And for almost all of us in those roles, leadership without a serious commitment to managing well is just not realistic. Any discussion of leadership that does not call us to manage people, time, and work wisely is missing a core part of what leadership actually is for the vast majority of us.
Management vs. Leadership
There is a lot of noise about how leadership and management are different. The distinction is real, but it is not a clean separation.
Management: Managing the Pieces of the Puzzle
Management often involves optimizing and refining existing elements. It’s about taking what already exists and making incremental improvements. For example, in a workflow, management focuses on improving efficiency. In education, it might mean enhancing an existing class to provide a better student experience. While management certainly includes overseeing and supporting a team, I find it particularly helpful to think of it as the practice of making the best possible use of resources and processes already in place.
Think about management like working with puzzle pieces that already exist. The role is to rearrange and refine those pieces so that they fit together optimally and function smoothly.
Leadership: A New Vision for the Puzzle
Leadership, however, involves creating a vision for an entirely new puzzle. The puzzle doesn’t exist yet, but you have a clear picture in your mind of what you want it to look like. You are not just optimizing existing components but crafting something entirely new. Of course, no idea is completely original. Austin Kleon, in his book Steal Like an Artist, points out that we’re always gathering ideas from elsewhere and reshaping them into something uniquely our own.
Healthy organizations need both. Healthy leaders accept that they have to do both.
Vision without communication falls flat
Even a clear vision is useless if it stays in your head.
At some point, you have to put language around it that other people can carry. You have to repeat it until you are tired of hearing yourself say it. You have to connect it to the real work in front of people, not just to abstract values on a slide.
I find the “10–80–10 rule” a helpful way to frame this:
First 10%: you set the vision and outline the direction. What are we trying to change, and why does it matter.
Middle 80%: your team does the bulk of the work. They build, test, revise, ship, and support.
Final 10%: you step back in to clear obstacles, make calls, and align the outcome with the original intent.
That middle 80% is where vision, communication, and management collide. It is not enough to “inspire the team” and walk away. You have to:
Translate the vision into actual priorities.
Decide what you will not do so the important work can move.
Sequence projects so people are not pulled in five directions at once.
Keep reconnecting the daily work to the larger why.
If you skip that, the vision dies in the gap between the whiteboard and the calendar.
Vision + Communication + Management
Leaders see beyond what is immediately visible. They notice opportunities, patterns, and possibilities other people miss. That is part of the job, but it is not the whole job.
Real leadership looks more like this:
You define a clear, specific future that is better than today.
You explain that future in simple language your team can repeat.
You manage the work so that people, time, and resources actually move in that direction.
In other words, you do not get to choose between being a “visionary leader” or a “strong manager.” If you are responsible for people and outcomes, you are responsible for both.
When vision, communication, and management line up, you do more than tweak what already exists. You create real, durable progress toward a future that does not yet exist, and you give your team a workable path to get there.