There are three roles in play here: * individual contributor (engineer). someone has skills to do something. works out how to achieve something. * manager. some

There are three roles in play here: * individual contributor (engineer). someone has skills to do something. works out how to achieve something. * manager. someone who ensures teams are happy, succeed and progress. manages resources (money and time), allocating to deliver results. * leader. someone who others can follow, paints a vision of where we want to get to, and why. most people ask others to be leaders, when they mean managers. you can be a IC and a Leader at the same time, or a manager and a Leader at the same time, but IC and Manager is often disaster (too busy focus on solving an issue to look up and see other issues).