Managemente and Leadership

Management and Leadership

Are you a manager or a leader? This is a question that has been asked from consultants to corporations. An organization needs both management and leadership. It is good for a corporation to understand the differences between the both. I think Leaders and Managers have very clear and distinct qualities but highly interconnect together. Skilled set management and leadership are needed to achieve organizational goals. Depending on the size of an organization, management and leadership roles may be carried out by the same person, or by multiple managers who carry out the two roles.

I believe that a leader is one who guides people in a certain direction to accomplish a certain goal. Every business needs leadership. Leadership is on of the ways managers affect the behavior of people in the company. In history most of the great accomplishers became leaders for an unpredictable special quality they had that let them rise to the occasion when needed. In an organization today, a leader may not necessarily be the CEO of a company. The CEO will oversee the company as a whole, whereas a manager or supervisor of a department will be the point of contact that an employee will look to for direction.

Being a leader is not the same as being a manager. A leader can lead people in a certain direction, whereas a manager can manage people in their jobs. Management has put together people in groups or organizations that will help the company drive to improvements. The biggest difference between managers and leaders is the way they motivate the people who work or follow them, and this sets the tone for most other aspects of what they do. Managers have a position of authority vested in them by the company, and their subordinates work for them and largely do as they are told. Ideally, you will develop managers that can lead and leaders that can manage. Most successful managers are also successful leaders. Many leaders, even the brightest, figure out what has to happen with things in the company, tell people what is needed for the desired results and then expect things to happen-a gross simplification of the process. An organization that uses work teams has a leader whose task is to bring everyone together to work as a team. Every one shares the same vision and wants to accomplish the same task. With out a leader, employees can be distracted and misled as to the mission that affects the company as a whole. Motivation is a key factor which both leadership and management must possess; with out this, employees have nothing to look forward to. Their motivation would have to rise above the average and take personal responsibility for the outcome of the task.

It is good to have a participate leader that likes to receive input from others and aims for balance. This leader feels that by involving others in the decision making process will help alleviate conflicts in the workplace. In my organization, there seems to be both types of leaders. In my particular department, there is the participate leader who likes to get everyone's involvement and opinions when a major decision needs to be made. In the other departments I have seen the other leader who does not involve the department at all, and makes decisions on their own. This has caused his department to not be so successful like ours. His employees to do not want to follow his lead because they do