Manager is a title. The term "leader" is an implication of obligation of status at a given workplace. A manger without "leadership" skills will underperform at a base level and fail to bring out the best in their employees hence promoting low productivity/poor work quality/higher stress levels/etc. As far as references go, you can have a friend try to "do it for you" but any manager worth their job will be able to realize that is the case after spending a few minutes actually following up on those references. Your numbers look great, but real time spent in a workplace dealing with these issues speaks volumes.