IMPORTANT RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT
Leadership and management are the terms that are often considered synonymous. It is essential to understand that leadership is an essential part of effective management. As a crucial component of management, remarkable leadership behavior stresses upon building an environment in which each and every employee develops and excels. Leadership is defined as the potential to influence and drive the group efforts towards the accomplishment of goals. A manager must have traits of a leader, i.e., he must possess leadership qualities. Leaders develop and begin strategies that build and sustain competitive advantage. Organizations require robust leadership and robust management for optimal organizational efficiency. Management is more usually viewed as getting things done through other people in order to achieve organizational goals. The managers may react to specific situations and more concerned with short-termproblem-solving. Management is regarded as related to people working in a structured organization and with prescribed roles. The emphasis of leadership is on interpersonal behavior in a broader sense. Leadership is one of the many assets of a successful manager. A leader can be a manager but it is not necessary that a manager must be a leader. The most important aim of a manager is to maximize the organizational output through managerial performance. But leader always seeks new possibilities and understand new possibilities in the organization. Most of the workgroups are more loyal to leaders than managers. Management, by its very nature, is challenging, precise, detailed and involves specific and usually, timed, actions. Leadership, on the other hand, requires a much broader sense and involves aligning, goal-setting, vision-sharing, inspiration and an inherent lack of any time criticality. Good management includes aspects of good leadership and good leadership includes aspects of good management. A leader devoid of management skill and a manager lacking any leadership capability will each fail. From my point of view, management is a science and can be learned. Leadership, however, is an art. While some of the capabilities necessary to be a great leader can be acquired over time, much of what makes terrific leaders great is inborn or, at the very least, was learned much earlier in life. DIFFERENCES BETWEEN LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT While managers lay down the structure and delegates authority and responsibility, leaders provide direction by developing the organizational vision and communicating it to the employees and inspiring them to achieve it. While management focuses on planning, organizing, staffing, directing and controlling; leadership is mainly a part of directing function of management. Leaders focus on listening, building relationships, teamwork, inspiring, motivating and persuading the followers. While a leader gets his authority from his followers, a manager gets his authority by virtue of his position in the organization. While managers follow the organization’s policies and procedure, the leaders follow their own instinct. Management is more of science as the managers are exact, planned, standard, logical and more of mind. Leadership, on the other hand, is an art. In an organization, if the managers are required, then leaders are a must/essential. While management deals with the technical dimension of an organization or the job content; leadership deals with the people aspect of an organization. While management measures/evaluates people by their name, past records, present performance; leadership sees and evaluates individuals as having the potential for things that can’t be measured, i.e., it deals with future and the performance of people if their potential is fully extracted. If management is reactive, leadership is proactive. Management is based more on written communication, while leadership is based more on verbal communication. Leadership accompanied by management sets a new direction and makes efficient use of resources to achieve it. Both leadership and management are essential for the individual as well as organizational success. TRAITS OF AN EFFECTIVE LEADER Dignity and respectfulness: A good leader respects others. He should not use his followers as a medium to achieve his personal goals. He should respect their feelings, decision,and values. Respecting the followers implies listening effectively to them, being compassionate to them, as well as being liberal in hearing opposing viewpoints. In short, it implies treating the followers in a manner that authenticate their values and beliefs. Serving others: He should serve others. An ethical leader should place his follower’s interests ahead of his interests. He should be humane. He must act in a manner that is always fruitful for his followers. Justice: He should be fair and just. An ethical leader must treat all his followers equally. There should be no personal bias. Wherever some followers are treated differently, the ground for differential treatment should be fair, clear, and built on morality. Community building: He should develop community. An ethical leader considers his own purpose as well as his followers’ purpose while making efforts to achieve the goals suitable to both of them. He is considerate to the community interests. He does not overlook the followers’ intentions. He works harder for the community goals. Honesty: He should be loyal and honest. Honesty is essential to be an ethical and effective leader. Honest leaders can be always relied upon and depended upon. They always earn the respect of their followers. An honest leader presents the fact and circumstances truly and completely, no matter how critical and harmful the fact may be. He does not misrepresent any fact. TRAITS OF AN EFFECTIVE MANAGER Leadership Most companies promote employees that have great individual results. The problem is that a really good salesperson will rarely be a really good manager. The true leader will always be able to inspire trust, delegate responsibility and provide direction. We cannot have a leader without the manager being able to perfectly perform these three tasks. While leadership skills can be gained in time, the natively talented manager will actually be able to gain all that he needs to be a true leader in a short period of time. That is something that is a lot more important than what many believe at the moment. Every single successful business manager out there is a leader that takes the team he manages and makes it work better, faster and more effectively. Communication It is very important for the manager to have really strong communication skills. It is not enough to show that you appreciate your employees. You need to properly highlight what you want from them so that everything would go smooth. The effective manager has to be able to properly decipher, understand and then relate the vision of the organization to the employees so that productivity is maintained. If communicators are ineffective, the employees will not actually understand what the manager tells them. That can lead to so many different problems in the future. The entire team would end up feeling bad since efficiency would be low. Such a chain reaction can have a devastating effect on the profit of any company. Adaptability Business rarely goes exactly as you initially envisioned it. A successful manager should have the ability to adapt. This is something that makes him/her really effective at the job. If the manager can adapt to the circumstances that are unexpected, the entire team will be led towards more success in the future. This also means that a successful manager has the necessary creative thinking to find a new solution to any problem that may appear. Developing Other People You cannot have employees that remain still when referring to the skills that they have. Any financial blog on the internet will tell you that an effective manager will make sure that the employee improves and that he becomes better at the job that is done. Developing other people basically involves cultivating talents and then motivating them to channel gained talents towards increasing productivity. Building Relationships The manager needs to establish really good relationships with potential clients and employees. Those employees that feel they are valued will always be more effective and will put in the extra effort that can bring in better results at the end of the day. When referring to building a relationship with the employee, it is really important that the manager manages to showcase empathy and trust in the ability of the team. That is something that helps everyone love working under the guidance of the specific team leader. Make sure that you know as much as possible about the employees, their strong points and weak points. Constant Development An effective manager is the one that knows the problem that he has and constantly works on solving them. Career development is a huge part of career success in any job. You need to develop in order to be able to lead employees. If you remain at the same level, the entire team remains at the same level. That manager that manages to continue growing will eventually learn how to use the above mentioned natural talents in order to make the team work great and even encourage that the employees do the same thing.The manager that never develops is basically bound to eventually lag behind as he cannot adapt to the market.