(Name of Author)
Differences in Management and Leadership
Introduction
Both leadership and management provide contributions valuable to an organization with their activities sometimes overlapping. This has led to the assumption that all managers can exercise leadership, and all leaders can manage with some people even using the terms synonymously. This is not the case as the two positions entail distinct functions, with not all managers being able to lead and some leaders do not have management positions. In fact, they are sometimes seen as extreme opposites, with some people saying that a good manager cannot be a good leader and vice-versa. To get a better understanding of these two fields we critically analyze their functions and qualities, comparing them to each other.
Management
Management can be defined as exercising control of a group or organization through administration, execution and supervision. The responsibilities of a manager are usually task- oriented involving staff development, mentoring high potential personnel and conflict resolution while maintaining discipline and ethics. The primary objective of a manager is the provision of services to the society in a sustainable and effective manner. In general, management entails efficient planning, coordinating, monitoring, budgeting and organizing all the activities of a group or an enterprise to achieve set goals.
Research shows that to be an efficient manager; one has to possess three vital skill sets that include human, conceptual and technical. Human skill refers to the capacity to relate well with other people, technical skill refers to the expertise in a certain type of work, and conceptual skill refers to the potential to the work with ideas. Other qualities necessary for a manager to perform his duties include good communication, delegation, negotiation, and organizational skills. All these skills are very critical to a manager because of the nature of their jobs that include instructing and directing staff, systems, resources and structures assigned to them. The managers strive to improve efficiency through tested and established standards to achieve short term goals without any risks.
Leadership
Leadership is a complex term with multidimensional phenomena, different people have defined it differently, but all definitions point to leadership being the development of a vision and influencing a group of people to work towards achieving a common objective. Leaders aim to create enthusiasm to follow their vision, take risks to achieve long-term goals and challenge the status quo. Leaders tend to have qualities such as creativity, risk-taking, vision, integrity, decisiveness, commitment, toughness, and selfness. These qualities give leaders skills like charisma, a sense of mission, ability to find solutions to problems and influence people.
It is general belief that leaders have the best interest of their followers at heart hence people follow leaders directly with leaders directing them using transformational techniques. Research shows that the ability to become a good leader depends on individual characteristics and behaviors that are not common to everyone like confidence, responsibility, strong self-esteem, expertise, good listening and coaching skills, willingness to share and the right sense of priorities.
Management versus Leadership
There are certain similarities between management and leadership such as they both involve working with people and achieving organizational goals. However, these two fields are very different in that leadership is deemed to be multi-directional relationship influence and management considered to be unidirectional authority relation. Leaders encourage new changes and approaches and work to gain people’s commitment by understanding their beliefs. Managers promote stability by exercising control and work to get things done.
Leadership aims to create a vision for the organization preparing it for future change while ensuring development, aligns their team members with the vision and motivates them to work towards the vision through basic need fulfillment. The leaders are aware of their personnel’s professional strength and weaknesses, official positions and emotional standings. Also, they are concerned with the professional work, communicative and social enabling them to know how to effectively motivate employees. Managers, on the other hand, are involved with taking care of the daily structures, systems, and processes to implement the leader’s vision with minimal risk. Managers are deliberate, authoritative, analytical and consulting with the rationale and persistence. They only deal with the organization and understand their group’s professional expertise but not their emotional standings.
Conclusion
Although both managers and leaders share a common goal of achieving an organization’s objective, they do this in entirely different ways. Managers exercise a formal power to control power and influence personnel to work to achieve the objectives while leaders use inspiration, vision, and motivation to ensure that the workers align with their plans. Striking a balance between management and leadership is very critical in ensuring the success of an organization.
References
Algahtani, D. A. (2014). Are Leadership and Management Different? A Review. Journal of Management Policies and Practices, 71-82.
Lunenburg, F. C. (2011). Leadership versus Management: A Key Distinction. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT, BUSINESS, AND ADMINISTRATION.
