If you Google “Difference between leadership and management in adult social care”, you’ll get about 295,000,000 results. While there’s broad agreement on what the two terms mean, there’s also plenty of discussion (and sometimes debate) about how they should be applied in practice.
Leadership has been in the spotlight in adult social care lately – and for good reason. Strong leadership is key to inspiring teams, driving better outcomes and keeping services running smoothly. But effective management is just as essential.
People often says that managers keep things running, while leaders inspire change – but in social care, the lines aren’t always so clear. In my own experience as a support worker, ‘leadership’ was often used to refer to office-based senior staff, while ‘management’ refers to those actually leading teams on the ground. Some might argue that calling frontline care managers leaders could boost morale, progression, and retention. Others might see it as a quick fix rather than real change.
How important is it to draw a clear line between the two? And what would that even look like in practice? Do leadership and management need to be distinct roles, or can a great manager also be a great leader—and vice versa?
Defining Management and Leadership
Broadly speaking, management and leadership are accepted to go hand in hand, but to serve different but complementary roles:
- Management is typically associated with structure and stability—organising work, implementing processes, and ensuring everything runs smoothly. Managers are seen as those who oversee daily operations, allocate tasks, and enforce policies and procedures.
- Leadership, on the other hand, is commonly linked to vision and change—boosting collaboration, and driving progress. Leaders are often described as people who motivate, develop and guide teams.
In short, it’s often said that managers keep things running, while leaders inspire and transform. But in social care, the reality is rarely that straightforward.
The Overlapping Roles of Managers and Leaders
In practice, the lines between management and leadership often blur. A manager may be responsible for coordinating staff but not necessarily have leadership skills, while a leader might inspire change without directly managing a team. For example:
- Some leaders in social care focus on advocacy - championing the sector, representing care professionals, and influencing policy.
- Other leaders may take a more hands-on approach, empowering their teams by onboarding, motivating, and upskilling staff to deliver high-quality care.
- Meanwhile, roles like payroll, property management, or IT may carry the manager title, despite having no direct oversight of staff.
Perhaps, then, leadership and management aren’t always tied to job titles - but might be more about the impact individuals have within their organisations.
The Misconceptions Around These Terms
There’s a sense that the term ‘leadership’ has, in some ways, become simply a rebrand of ‘management’, the latter carrying certain negative connotations.
Over time, “manager” has come to become associated with bureaucracy, often linked to rigid, top-down decision-making. In contrast, “leader” is often seen as a more dynamic, aspirational term. But leadership isn’t always framed positively either - some might see it as self-promotional, or even elitist.
In reality, both roles are essential, and the debate over the terminology can sometimes overshadow the real issue: ensuring that professionals in social care, whether they identify as managers or leaders, are properly supported, trained, and empowered to succeed.
A Personal Perspective
From my own experience in social care, I’ve seen firsthand how these roles overlap. My manager is also a leader - she motivates her team, helps us through the challenges of the job, and makes sure we have the training and resources to do our best work. She takes the organisation's vision and makes it practical, always asking what we need to make it a reality.
She’s never, to my knowledge, referred to herself a leader, but by many definitions, she is one. Would embracing the term change anything? Quite possibly. But what matters most to us as the people who work under her is that she has the skills, knowledge, and support to do her job effectively. And that’s what the sector really needs - not just new terminology, but meaningful investment in people.
Addressing the Real Issues
Alongside the push for leadership, it’s worth looking at what’s missing in management.
- Unlike other industries, management in adult social care doesn’t always come with structured training in people management, change management, or new technologies.
- Due to high turnover, managers may be more likely to be promoted based on merit, experience, or enthusiasm rather than leadership experience and skills. Whilst this is a good thing in many ways, enabling people to progress and succeed in their roles, it’s vital to support them in developing essential management and leadership skills.
- As Matt Aldridge-Russell, Head of L&D at the Order of St John’s Care Trust, noted in our recent webinar, The Future of Care Leadership: people don’t leave organisations—they leave managers.
Before focusing solely on leadership, organisations should consider examining their management training pathways. It may be that many aspiring leaders could benefit from the confidence gained by first strengthening their management skills.
The Bottom Line
Ultimately, both leadership and management are vital in social care, however they are defined. More than anything, both roles need proper support—through training, funding, and professional development—to create a sector where people are empowered to step into the roles that suit them best.
Whether we call them managers or leaders, what really matters is how we equip them to make a difference.
Our online Leadership course bundle gives care leaders all they need to level up—from team building and communication to strategic planning and compliance.
