Leadership verses management
There are various opinions on the difference between leadership and management. In fact, there have been hundreds of great books and professional articles written on the subject. My opinion can be very simply described.
?A good manager reacts appropriately to management requests, business issues and business processes. By management requests, I am referring to special requests for analysis, cutting your budget as needed, and other similar activities. Example business issues include dealing with difficult employees, solving disputes with vendors, helping customers and generally handling unforeseen events. By business process, I am referring to properly following company and department level procedures. Company level processes include activities like budgeting, salary planning and performance reporting. Department level processes encompass the workflow oriented tasks needed to make a department effective and efficient.
?The ability to effectively execute this management side of your job is essential to your success.
?The concept of leadership is more of an intangible. Leadership is the ability to formulate vision and articulate that vision in such a way that other people understand it, embrace it and move toward its reality.
?In a company setting, leaders are the agents of change, the internal entrepreneurs and the risk takers. As you can see, adding leadership to your management role adds an entirely new dimension to your job and to your value to the organization.
?Leadership in a corporate setting also reveals itself in another way, namely, through the respect, loyalty and trust of your staff. In its truest essence, leadership is the ability to take control and have people that wish to follow. In a corporate setting, effective leadership can be a catalyst that drives department productivity, product quality and organizational pride.
?I should point out, that organizations need all three types of managers, namely, management oriented, leadership oriented, and those with a combination of both management and leadership attributes.
?What I have found is that
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?Over the years I have worked for all three types of these managers and have learned to respect them. They are all vital to the health, strength, and growth of companies of all sizes. It’s interesting; I’ve seen the same manager be very successful in one company and unsuccessful in another. In both companies this person worked just as hard, had similar responsibilities, and was in a similar organizational role. The difference between the two companies where he worked was the corporate culture. One company had a higher respect for managers that were innovative and leadership oriented and the other company primarily rewarded managers who followed existing process. Both were high quality companies, but they operated very differently.
?From your perspective, I suggest you consider the following.
?The primary advice and takeaways are to know that:
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?(First published in GateHouse News Service.)
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6 个月Thank you, Eric Bloom, for this insightful article distinguishing between leadership and management. Your analysis is particularly relevant in today's rapidly evolving business and technology landscape. In our current environment, organizations face the dual challenge of exploitation (optimizing current operations) and exploration (innovating for the future). This dichotomy necessitates a dynamic combination of both leadership and management skills. Leaders today must be adept at switching between visionary leadership to drive exploration and hands-on management to ensure efficient exploitation. The ability to balance and seamlessly transition between these roles is becoming crucial for adapting to change and achieving success.
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6 个月I like to make a more profound separation between managers and leaders. Even with the three types of managers you mention, the leaders in the true role and meaning and executives who set and adjust vision, as you mentioned, but equally important, they develop the strategies that allow the vision to be reached and then explain the strategies to the managers so they can use the strategies to execute and literally 'manage' the process of strategy execution. In this approach, managers strategically work with what they have been given. Leaders develop forward-looking strategies. One could go as far as claiming that managers work in the here and now while leaders develop the future. Transitioning from management into leadership is one of the hardest shifts because the perspective, orientation, and mindset need to be totally different between the two.
Senior Network Engineer at Veson Nautical
6 个月That's an excellent view of this. Leadership is proactive; Management is reactive. Love it.