Playing Leader and Manager Roles

"All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts." — William Shakespeare As You Like It)

To understand the difference, it helpful to look at a role--not the thing you eat unfortunately. A role is a fairly standardized behavior. Technically, a social role is, "An expected behavior for a given individual that relates to social status and social position."

In a family environment, a woman plays the role of mother, aunt, sister, daughter, grandmother, lover, etc. as she goes through life. A man will play complementary roles, the father, uncle, son, brother and so on.

It's important to understand, that one also plays roles at work. For example, the Dictionary of Occupational Titles has thousands listed. In the professional category, many professions such as medicine and law have even have a number of specialty roles.

Certain roles function almost as a class. These include: employees (or workers), manager, executives, entrepreneurs, investors, and stockholders. Within the executive class, we have the various c-level role such as: the CEO, CFO, CIO, COO, and so on.