Leadership != Management
Many people confuse leadership and management. In actuality, these are significantly different. Leadership is all about goal setting while management is about goal achievement. Leadership is vision, management is execution. A purely managerial role is like a jigsaw puzzle: fitting in people and their skillsets in order to achieve. Leadership is figuring out what the picture needs to look like.
Natural leaders are rare and frequently rise quickly in organizations, but leadership can be trained (to an extent). The problem is that it takes a leader to train one, and few organizations place priority on grooming future leadership or mentoring.
Managing people is also a significantly different task than managing computer systems. Computers are logical and people are not so much. Just like leaders need training, managers also need training. And in addition to the training, they need to spend time with the people they manage learning about their motivations, their skillsets, and their desires.
The other challenge facing business is that frequently managers are expected to be both managers AND leaders. If a person is a natural in one or both of these, they will excel without much training, but these individuals are extremely rare. More common is the person who requires training in one and frequently both. These individuals are the ones who get set up for failure when promoted because few companies take the time necessary to mentor these individuals in both management and leadership areas.
