Management Vs. Leadership

Management vs. Leadership

The comparison and differences of traits between leadership and management techniques and styles is like comparing apples and oranges. Leadership should be an asset of management but unfortunately not all managers have leadership qualities A manager is a director, an overseer, someone who dictates employees. A leader is focused on organizing and inspiring people to be entrepreneurs. The role and responsibilities of both leaders and managers in creating and maintaining a healthy organizational culture has differences and similarities, both a leader and a manager have the same goal to have a healthy organization but the approaches are different. An example from sums up the differences between a leader and a manager:

“The leader is followed and the manager rules. A leader is someone who people naturally follow through their own choice, whereas a manager must be obeyed. A manager may only have obtained his position of authority through time and loyalty given to the company, not as a result of his leadership qualities. A leader may have no organizational skills, but his vision unites people behind him”.

Managers enjoy the status quo while leaders accept change. Managers like their environment to stay the same; they want to keep their empire untouched without anything altering this managerial world of dictatorship and control. Leaders allow change and use it to their advantage by taking the change and running with it and people like to follow someone with confidence and assurance to make this change a positive objective. Managers are inclined to take control and control situations, and leaders delegate and include everyone as a team. Leaders initiate and implement while involving people and managers demand and command people what to do.

A structure based organization is essential for a manager while leaders are flexible to do what is best rather then what the procedures state. Leaders are innovators with creativity to invent and focus on vision. Leaders concentrate on the future while managers think about short-term goals and focus on what needs to be dealt with now with no intention of thinking about the future. Managers are administrators of facts, figures, and statistics rather than planning for what lies ahead. Managers are generally preoccupied with maintenance issues and dealing with solving problems while leaders find problems.

Driven by Policy and procedures and pays attention to titles and positions is what managers are more concerned with and leaders develop relationships and encourage judgment and application of guidelines. Leaders are natural mentors and see peoples strengths while managers evaluate people, restrict initiative, and look for what employees are doing wrong. Assessing and pushing individuals to do what the manager wants to achieve an overall goal while leaders draw people and empower effectiveness through influential skills.

Both the manager and leader have the same ambition to create and maintain a healthy organizational culture. The manager and leader seek to produce a healthy atmosphere for employees to work but the intentions are different. The manager requires a healthy organizational culture in order to get more work generated from employees while a leader respects and believes a healthy environment will improve results. Building and maintaining a healthy organizational culture will establish an efficient workplace. Both a leader and manager support the workplace to be more efficient.

One recommendation to create and maintain a healthy organizational culture would to have open communication within the workplace. Communication is a key factor for a positive, respectful, and fluid working environment. Communication between coworkers keeps an open and honest atmosphere that will sustain a value-added workflow. Employees will be liable to work smoothly with fewer distractions when using communication as a tool for effective work ethics. National Defense University has some useful information on communication and how communication is a facet of organizational cultures:

“Organizational cultures are created, maintained, or transformed by people. An organization's culture is, in part, also created and maintained by the organization's leadership… Leaders also establish the parameters for formal lines of communication and message content-the formal interaction rules for the organization. Values and norms, once transmitted through the organization, establish the permanence of the organization's culture”(NDU, n.d.).

Open communication reduces anxiety that employees