What Is the Difference Between Good Leadership and Good Management

Difference between Good Leadership and Good Management.

Do you want to be led or to be managed? Being led indicate that you are willingly being led by a leader whereas being managed, you are being told what to do and usually not willingly. Warren G. Bennis says “Managers do thing right; leaders do the right thing” I believe this saying is correct because what a Manager does is to complete whatever it is set for he or she to be accomplished and follow the company policy closely. A manager will only need to complete the task set therefore only “doing the task right” regardless of how his or her subordinates feel. Whereas a leader will influence his or her subordinates with his idea before making the right decision. My definition of Management is making the most efficient use of human, physical and financial resources to achieve given objectives; involves planning, monitoring, coordinating and reviewing activities. This would be what a manager would have to go through when given and objective to achieve. The definition of Leadership is to influencing others to achieving desired aims and objectives; leaders set the agenda that managers follow. Ideally, a manager who is also a leader is everyone who wants to follow but it is hard to have both in life.

“Leadership is only a facet of good management.” (1). The role of leadership: to provide inspiration, create opportunities, energize people, and make key choices. We need to understand that there are two kinds of leaders: strategic and operational. A strategic leader can predict the company’s future and to invest the resources necessary to create it. Operational leader’s job is to implementing the vision. Although, there are two different leaders, but there are only four things that it takes to become a Good Leader. They are: selecting talent, motivating people, coaching, and building trust. A good leader should not be afraid of subordinates that are more knowledgeable or talented then him or her as these subordinate helps to get a task done well. A Good leader should be able to designate responsibilities to the right person. When the responsibilities are designated correctly, it could motivate people, as those responsibilities are meaningful to them. With the combination of intrinsic motivation with extrinsic rewards and recognition, it can produce highly motivated people. If you want people to cooperate, reward and recognition is very important, these incentives should reinforce the good behavior needed for the team’s success.

A good leader should also strengthens motivation and develops competence through coaching. In particular, he or she should knows how to keep his or her subordinates focused, recognizing that unless subordinates keep their eyes on the goals, the tend to drift into paths that are attractive to them which are not essentially best for the business. Good leaders should also be able to fire up people by convincing them that their job is vital for the business to succeed. On one hand, people usually quickly turn off when they feel their work is unnecessary and not appreciated. On the other, they feel motivated even doing simple repetitive work when it is meaningful, like stuffing envelopes for a cause they deeply support.

In this constantly changing world, as new competitors upset plans, technological breakthroughs force rethinking strategy therefore it is hard for a good leader to develop trust between subordinates. To overcome this difficulty, good leaders should increase trust by promoting transparency and involvement. Transparency means clarifying reasons for decisions and being open about compensation policy, business results and market information. Knowledgeable workers want to know what the leaders knows about the leader knows about what is coming down the road. They also want a say in decisions they are expected to implement. They want