Leadership or Management? What do you prefer.?
Leadership or Management ? What do you prefer.?
Leadership Vs. Management
Leadership and management are often discussed as two practically corresponding theories. But are they? Is there a difference between these two concepts or leadership is a different side of management and so cannot be separated? Almost all organizations, including large corporations, academia, leadership theorists, researchers and authors are concerned about the difference and believe it is vital to identify these two learnings in order to perform better.
Leadership
There are many diverse definitions of leadership. Leadership is a process of social influence which maximizes efforts of others towards achievement of a goal. “To gain followers requires influence but doesn't exclude the lack of integrity in achieving this” (Yukl, 1989). Some researchers consider that there is no difference in leadership from the social influence processes occurring among all members of a group and others believe that leadership is everything someone is doing in order to lead them effectively. The classic question if leaders are made or born is still concerning many researchers. Is it a personality or something that can be taught? The answer to this question differs. Although it is acceptable that leading is not an easy task, leaders should have some important characteristics such as vision, integrity, trust, creativity, commitment, toughness, communication ability, risk taking and visibility (Capowski, 1994).
Management
Some describe management as an art, but some others would define it as a science. Whether management is an art or a science isn't what is most important. Management is a procedure which used to achieve organizational goals which is also a process that is used to achieve what an organization wants to achieve. A manager is the member of an organization with the responsibility of carrying out the four important functions of management: planning, organizing, leading, and controlling. But are all managers leaders? Unfortunately, not all managers are leaders. Some managers have poor leadership qualities, and employees follow orders from their managers because they are obligated to do so only, not essentially because they are influenced or inspired by the leader.
Table 1: Comparison between Leadership and management- Process differences in the Workplace (Kotterman, 2006)
Conclusion
Based on the facts taken in to discussion it is obvious that there is an essential strong request for leadership, even the request comes from a managerial nature. Managers of all levels play an important role in the development of a self-assessment project through the performance evaluation methods and have a high impact on the organizations’ way to success. Further research on how organizations handle this strong request of leadership involvement and commitment and how do excellent organizations manage to gain competitive advantage is important to be taken in to consideration. However, it cannot be debatable that the contribution of leadership and management on the organizations’ success is high or low. Managers and leaders are both important and if lucky when you find both qualities in the same person, it’s like hitting a professional jackpot. A well balanced organization should have a mix of leaders and managers to succeed, and in fact what they really need is a few great leaders and many first-class managers (Kotterman, 2006)
References
Yukl, G., (1989), “Managerial Leadership: a review of theory and research”, Journal of Management.
Capowski, G., (1994), “Anatomy of a leader: where are the leader of tomorrow?”, Management Review.
Kotterman, J., (2006), “Leadership vs Management: What’s the difference?”, Journal for Quality
& Participation, Vol. 29
Duggal, N., (2019), “What’s the Difference between Leadership and Management?” Simplilearn Solutions, [online]
Duggal, N., (2019), “What’s the Difference between Leadership and Management?” Simplilearn Solutions, [online]
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