Drive down Main Street in Anytown, and you'll see gas stations, restaurants, supermarkets, banks and various office buildings. For each of these entities, there is a single person who is ultimately responsible - a person who is in charge. Are these leaders or are they just people in charge? Is there a difference?

Scholar and author, Warren Bennis, is regarded as an expert in this area. In fact, he could be called THE leading expert. Bennis has written more than 27 books on the subject of leadership, served on the faculties of Harvard, Boston University and USC, advised four US presidents and consulted for many Fortune 500 companies. In 1996, Forbes magazine called him the, "dean of leadership gurus, and in 2000, The Financial Times referred to him as, "the professor who established leadership as a respectable academic field."

Bennis has studied leadership from just about every angle imaginable. In the course of his studies, Bennis has found very distinct differences between those who are truly leaders and those who are merely in charge. For purposes of differentiation, he calls the first group Leaders and the second group Managers.   

In his 1989 book, Learning to Lead: A Workbook on Becoming a Leader, Bennis drew 12 distinctions between Managers and Leaders:

• Managers administer - Leaders innovate
• Managers ask how and when - Leaders ask what and why
• Managers focus on systems - Leaders focus on people
• Managers do things right - Leaders do the right things
• Managers maintain - Leaders develop
• Managers rely on control - Leaders inspire trust
• Managers have a short-term perspective - Leaders have a longer-term perspective
• Managers accept the status-quo - Leaders challenge the status-quo
• Managers have an eye on the bottom line - Leaders have an eye on the horizon
• Managers imitate - Leaders originate
• Managers emulate the classic good soldier - Leaders are their own person
• Managers are copies  - Leaders are original

Don't be fooled into thinking that these Managers are simply poor leaders, though. On the contrary, we desperately need the managers. After all, don't we need someone to administer, ask how and why, maintain focus on systems, do things right and keep an eye on the bottom line?

The key lies in knowing which one you are and which one you really want to be. It goes without saying that assessments can provide us with the answer here. The CheckPoint 360 assessment can provide us with much more than an answer and the accompanying SkillBuilder guides can give us a personal road map to becoming a truly great leader. So, which one are you? Which one do you want to be?

Aaron Southard is a human resource consultant, keynote speaker and international trainer.