How leaders become managers: Natural leaders, with training, evolve into professional managers. This transition is the greatest challenge to career development

Two issues about management are making the rounds these days, and generating a great deal of heat — if not much light. The first has to do with the difference between leaders and managers and the question “Is a leader a manager and, conversely, are managers leaders?” The second issue calls up the current debate between rationality and intuition, which was brought to focus by Thomas Peters and Robert Waterman in their best-selling book In Search of Excellence. Messrs. Peters and Waterman say that it is high time that we move away from our preoccupation with rational management and toward an “esthetic, intuitive” type of management. Since the two issues are interrelated, in responding to one, we shall be dealing with both.