The latest newsletter, A Manager's Duty, is available now.

Sometimes it seems as though people don't understand this correlation between management and leadership. I talk about them as separate entities because they are, and yet, for someone to be good at one, they usually have to be good at the other. Doesn't always happen; truthfully, it happens rarely, which is probably what helps to keep me in business in some fashion.

Good managers are hard to find. Sure, it's easy to find competent managers, those who understand the product or the organization, or what the organization stands for. If that's all management was, it would be easy. But once people assume the mantle of manager, they need to learn how to work well with others; that's where things start to fall apart.

As opposed to leaders, managers sometimes need to learn how to lead. Yet, sometimes leaders also need to learn how to manage. Just because someone might be charismatic enough to get people to follow doesn't mean that person is intelligent enough to know how to plan, no matter what needs to be planned. A good leader might be a hero at any given moment, but not all good leaders are proficient enough at everything to get them wherever they want to go.

However, where leaders excel as opposed to managers is that they usually have a much better understanding of people, and therefore people are willing to go that extra step for them. Good leaders can get competent people to not only teach them what needs to be learned, but most of the time to do it for them, so they don't have to do it. And, oddly enough, that's exactly the job good managers are supposed to be doing.

So you see, it's a nice little symbiotic relationship that leadership and management have with each other. Sometimes it takes a bit of training to attain good leadership skills, but it's not impossible to achieve.