When you think of leaders, what characteristics come to mind? What about managers?

While we may be inclined to categorize them with different personalities and skill sets, they may not be as different as we think.

This week, we share career insights from Kellogg professor Harry Kraemer on examining the roles leaders and managers take on—and how accessing the experiences and wisdom of management can help you succeed as a leader.

Plus, Kellogg’s Adam Waytz examines research about social trends and how you may want to avoid reacting to vibes-based narratives.

Manage or lead?

Many businesspeople want to see themselves as leaders instead of managers, defining leaders as those who set the strategy and priorities that managers merely execute. But in a recent article for Forbes, Kraemer argues that we shouldn’t view the divide in such distinct terms, arguing that “managers and leaders are far more aligned than they are different.”

Management requires a shift in outlook from being an individual contributor to a focus on the goals of the team—from hiring the right people to developing their talent to getting things done in the organization. But that’s not all they do.

“Beyond carrying out the plans and the strategies, managers also … motivate and inspire others,” he writes. “In fact, when people within the organization think about corporate culture, they associate it with how their manager acts and treats others.”

In short, managers champion the organization’s values and principles and are positioned to shape the careers of those around them.

But when managers move up the organization and cross the threshold into leadership, they shouldn’t set aside those hard-won management skills, Kraemer advises.

“You cannot be an effective leader without strong management skills such as prioritizing, allocating resources, and recruiting the right people for the right positions,” he writes.

Leadership also requires that you build on the management experience gained on your way up and use it to realize the organization’s strategic goals.

“Your leadership skills allow you to be future-focused across the entire enterprise,” he writes. “But it’s your management experience that helps you roll up your sleeves and dig deeply to uncover problems and produce results.”

Read more at Forbes.

When is a trend really a trend?

Part of being a successful leader is pattern recognition. Whatever your industry, it’s important to keep your ear to the ground for larger trends that may affect your organization, whether it’s the welfare of employees or the reliability of your supply chain.

But what if a lot of the trends we hear about online and in the media are … less statistically significant than they seem.

In a recent article in Big Think, Kellogg’s Adam Waytz looks at the trend-spotting phenomenon and how, when the data around these trends is examined, many of them turn out to be either illusory, prone to reversal, or more complicated than they appear at first.

“Due to variations in when data are collected, where they are collected, and the instruments used to collect them, many trends that receive extensive media coverage are not as straightforward as they seem. So why do they have such staying power in our minds and in popular discussion?” Waytz writes.

Waytz chalks this up to pareidolia, or the “tendency to impose a meaningful interpretation on a nebulous stimulus.”

“Grasping at patterns in data helps us make sense of the daily cascade of information from news alerts about wars and plane crashes to reports of advances in artificial intelligence and groundbreaking medical treatments,” he writes.

Yet that tendency can also lead us astray. As business leaders, responding to patterns in data can make the difference between success or being left behind. But, as Waytz writes, it’s always important to verify that the latest common wisdom is backed by evidence.

“In seeking to make sense of what feels like unprecedented times, it might be just as comforting, and certainly more accurate, to remember that much of what we are experiencing now is quite precedented.”

Read more at Big Think.