Manager or Leader

Are you a manager or leader?

Say what?

This subject has been on my mind for years. Some argue that manager and leader are the same thing — they are not. An organization needs both, but they should not be treated as interchangeable. Some of what I’m about to share is purely my perspective and may not resonate with everyone; that’s not the intent. The goal is to spark conversation and get people thinking.

What inspired this? Many things over the years, but most recently, this tweet pushed me to finally put it into words.

IMHO, a true leader should only be visible within the team you are leading. Outside of your team however, the leader should not easily be recognized as your team should be empowered and on the same page. If the leader were to leave, that team should pick right up!

— Larry Smith Jr. (@mrlesmithjr) November 19, 2019

Background

I was raised in a military family, as many of us are. My father shaped me in ways that set me apart from most people I know. He taught me to lead by example, as most parents do, but he also taught me that you don’t need to be in the spotlight to be a true leader — treat everyone equally, and never put yourself above others.

I remember a story he told me about being promoted to foreman at General Motors. He thought it would be great, but he quickly found his former peers expecting him to treat them differently now that he was “one of them” — meaning management. After about a week, he refused to do that, gave up the foreman title, and went back to being with his people. My father was a leader to the utmost degree until he passed away almost five years ago. In my eyes, he still is.

Another thing he taught me was to respect titles, but to take them with a grain of salt — they should never dictate a conversation or a decision. That’s stuck with me throughout my life.

My Career

Throughout my career, I’ve been approached many times over the past ten years or so about taking on a management role. Anyone who’s had that conversation with me already knows my answer.

“No way in hell, not for me.”

So in most cases, it was agreed that I’d function in a mentor/advisor role instead. I’ve spent years mentoring others to be empowered and have a voice, working equally with my immediate team and with management. I’m notorious for having side chats with people during meetings, guiding them on what they might want to say based on the context of the discussion.

That begs the question: if I already know the answer, why wouldn’t I just speak up and be the leader myself? The answer is simple — empowering others to make their own voices heard builds their confidence, and it teaches me something too, since they often say it differently than I would have. I feel successful when I see others succeed.

This could be interpreted as the role of a manager. I disagree, and I will explain why.

Manager Roles

What does a manager role mean to me?

Work with me here, and please do not take offense, as none is intended.

A manager should be the go-to person and the face of the team they represent. They don’t need to be technical — I actually prefer they’re not. They need to have their team’s back when it counts, and they’re the ones who belong in the spotlight, not the team. I view a manager as a dictator, in the neutral sense of the word: they dictate what needs to get done and are ultimately accountable for getting it done.

In most cases, they may or may not know exactly what it takes to deliver. They need to stay open to their team disagreeing with them, and let the team decide the right course of action. I learned years ago that part of your job is to make your manager look good — which means the guidance you give them should be in everyone’s best interest, not just yours.

Remember the part where I said titles shouldn’t dictate your conversations or decisions? This is where it matters most. It’s not about disrespecting your manager — it’s about putting them on the same level playing field as everyone else. A good manager respects that and allows it, understanding that it’s in their best interest and makes them look good. This is the same principle behind feeling successful when you see others succeed.

Leader Roles

What does a leadership role mean to me?

A leader leads by example and doesn’t feel the need to stand out from their peers. Unlike a manager, a leader isn’t the go-to person or the face of the team — but they are the ones who inspire and empower others to do great things. A leader might only be recognized within their immediate team; outside of it, they should just look like part of the group.

Remember the tweet I linked above? A true leader stays out of the spotlight externally. They bring their team along with them, and the team should carry the same message the leader would. Their manager might know who the real leader is, but no one outside that circle needs to. A true leader puts the whole team in the spotlight instead of themselves — and often doesn’t even realize they’re leading. If you ever do realize it, stay humble. Don’t use it to get the upper hand; use it to empower the people around you.

Conclusion

I’m very passionate about this topic. Am I right about any of this? Probably not — these are just my opinions. But they’re worth discussing.

I also put this tweet out a week or so ago, and I meant every word of it. I received a lot of amazing messages from people because of it. So if you’re reading this and want to talk, reach out.

I'm at that point that my day to day work I do is no longer enjoyable without being more of a mentor. Problem is I need more willing mentees available. If you or someone you know is interested, reach out to me.

— Larry Smith Jr. (@mrlesmithjr) November 11, 2019

Seven Years Later — 2026 Update

It has been almost seven years since I originally wrote this, and rather than pretend it stands untouched by everything since, I want to add to it.

The Background section above is built around my father — the man who taught me to lead by treating everyone equally and never needing the spotlight. Two years ago, I learned through a DNA test that he was not my biological father. I also learned, for the first time, that I have a half-brother I never knew existed.

I want to be careful here, because this was never really a story about biology. The lessons in this post came from the man who raised me — who showed up, who taught me to put the team over the title, who walked away from a promotion rather than be pulled apart from “his people.” None of that required a DNA match to be true.

Here’s what actually happened: my dad knew he wasn’t my biological father. So did my mother. From what she’s told me since, they made a decision together early on that it wouldn’t matter — that he would claim me and love me as his own regardless. They never told me. I didn’t find out until a DNA test, well after he had already passed away, made it impossible not to know.

I go back and forth on how to feel about that, and I’ve stopped expecting it to resolve into one clean feeling. I’m grateful — genuinely — because he chose me, every day, for over thirty years, with nothing forcing his hand. That’s not a lesser kind of fatherhood; if anything, it’s the whole argument of this post taken as far as it can go: being someone’s leader, or their father, was never about title or blood. But I’m also angry, in a way I haven’t fully worked through, because I never got the chance to thank him for it while he was still here to hear it. Both of those are true at the same time, and I’ve made peace with them not canceling each other out.

The other side of that discovery is a half-brother I didn’t know I had. We built a relationship over the last couple of years, mostly by text at first, and we finally met in person this year. It’s been good — genuinely good — and it’s given me an expanded family I wasn’t looking for and am grateful to have found.

On the career side, there’s a piece of the original argument I want to push back on. In 2021 I moved into a full-time consulting role — technically I’m a consultant and technical lead, leading engineers on projects — and I’ve been there ever since, about five and a half years now. Consulting culture has its own expectations, and one of them is assertiveness. Clients want someone who sounds certain. I’ve been told directly, more than once, that I’d benefit from being more assertive and more outcome-focused.

My instinct is still to disagree, at least partly. I don’t think I need to be the loudest person in the room to lead it. Clients and teammates regularly ask if I’m going to be in the room before they commit to a meeting — that’s not nothing, and it didn’t come from being assertive. It came from the same thing this post has always been about: showing up, being reliable, making other people’s work easier.

Where I actually spend most of my time now backs that up. A big chunk of my current role is coaching — helping engineers find a path toward leadership, architecture, and consulting roles of their own. It’s not for everyone, and I’m upfront about that. What I try to give people in that seat is what this post has always argued for: reflection points instead of answers, honesty about what works for me and what doesn’t, and — maybe most importantly — transparency about my own struggles, hedging included. If I’m asking someone I’m coaching to be more direct with a client, I don’t get to hide the fact that I’m working on the exact same thing myself.

But I’ve also had to sit with feedback that’s harder to wave off — that the way I say things sometimes undercuts what I’m actually saying. Phrases like “I could be wrong, but…” or “does that make sense?” aren’t really about humility once you look closely; they’re a reflex that hands away authority I’ve actually earned, sentence by sentence, even when the underlying point is solid. That’s a different problem than the one this post was originally about. Being an invisible leader — not needing the spotlight, not needing the title — is about role and identity. It was never supposed to mean going quiet or hedging in the individual moments that call for directness. I conflated those two things in 2019, and consulting is where that conflation got expensive enough to notice.

This tension isn’t new, either. Looking back, I’d heard versions of this since at least 2014. A director at an earlier job told me I’d make a good manager. I said no, and when he offered “technical leadership” instead, that was the one that actually fit. A few years after that, at another company, people asked often enough that it became something of a running joke: he doesn’t want to be a manager, even though he’d be good at one. The pattern goes back further than this post does.

Looking back at 2019 me with that in mind, I think I know what this post was actually doing. It wasn’t really a philosophy of leadership — it was a defense. I’d been told “you’d be good at management” enough times, by people whose opinion mattered, that I needed a real argument for why turning it down over and over wasn’t me underachieving or hiding from something. Manager-as-dictator, leader-as-invisible-empowerer gave the “no” moral weight instead of just being a preference.

What’s different now isn’t the “no.” It’s that I’m not defending it anymore — I’m just describing it accurately. “I don’t want the paperwork, I want the cross-org technical-to-business translation work” isn’t a values argument. It’s a job description. The 2019 post had to argue that leaders are better than managers because it didn’t have the language yet for “these are two different jobs, and I’m good at one of them.” Seven years of actually doing the coaching, the consulting, the delivery work — that’s what supplied the vocabulary I didn’t have when I first wrote this.

So here’s the revision: the core argument still stands. You don’t need a title to lead, and you don’t need to be the face of the team to be the reason it works. But not needing the spotlight is not the same as not needing to be clear, and not wanting the title was never the same as not wanting the work. I can hold all of it at once — stay out of the spotlight, skip the paperwork, and still say exactly what I mean without softening it into a question.

Enjoy!