Managing people will invariably lead to “micromanagement”!

Although it appears that the concept of "leadership" is much more important and used in the business these days but that is not to think for a minute that "management" is no longer needed! In fact, we should repudiate the notion that leadership is everything and management is of a lesser value in comparison...

"Management & Leadership" are two similar but different terms that are both immensely important in any organization. No educated person in the right frame of mind should say that leadership is more important or vice versa. It is like saying that the "doctors" are more important than "nurses"! If so, just imagine a chaotic situation in a hospital full of doctors with no nurses. Here are two points of (yours truly) Mogarei's management rules:

• 1) Each person within an organization is important & needed for his/her job
• 2) Almost nobody in the organization is dispensible

Having said that, management and leadership have different but similar responsibilities. To start with, managers are supposed to do: Planning, Organizing, Staffing, Leading & Controlling, mainly. While leaders are expected to Inspire, Lead Change, Empower, Be Visionary, Strategize, Communicate well, Involve & Engage everyone, etc.

Of course, that is not to say that effective managers don't have/need leadership characteristics! That would be a very wrong notion. Managers too are expected to master leaders' roles and responsibilities to be fully effective.

However, here is the main difference in a nutshell; managers are expected to manage Tasks, Processes, Procedures, Projects, Complaints, Conflicts, Programs, etc. but when it comes to people, managers are expected to be able to Lead people, period.

Any attempts to manage people will invariably lead to micromanagement. And I hope we remember that!

Hormoz Mogarei