Difference between Leadership and Management
The correlation between leadership and management is always stirring numerous debates. The terms have a lot of overlaps and confusion, and most people often mistake one for the other. In essence, the two terms are different. Management is a process that has been developed to ensure that all activities are executed as planned. It revolves around planning, budgeting, decision making, management of staff, measuring performance, and readjustment of objectives. Leadership, on the other hand, is all about aligning people towards their goals. It involves communicating, motivating, and inspiring them to pursue their visions.
Leadership and management are two different things, but are also linked and complement each other. In an organization, management needs to plan, organize, and coordinate all activities effectively while still motivating and inspiring the staff to perform to the best of their ability.
So, how does Leadership differ from Management?
Leadership focus on encouraging and occasionally praising small steps of success as a way of motivating people to pursue their goals. Managers, on the other hand, work by organizing, giving instructions, finding faults, and ensuring that people adhere to a system of rules. The main focus is to control a group of people towards achieving particular objectives by engaging them to perform to the best of their ability. Managers encourage teamwork among people in an effort to achieve greater benefits. In contrast, leaders work by helping people create a new direction and vision and then inspiring and motivating them to accomplish their goals.
In addition, management is focused on short term goals and solving tasks at hand. Any action that does not contribute to the present situation is considered a waste of time. Leadership, on the other hand, is concerned with the future. Leaders seek to influence and inspire people into making decisions that will benefit them in the long term.
In pursuit of achieving the set goals, leaders find it important to engage closely with people, often creating trust ties. They work hand in hand and providing necessary support to people and pushing them to achieve even better results. Most managers, unless otherwise, rarely create such levels of trust. They find it unnecessary viewing it as extra workload, which might lower their performance.
Conclusion
Management and leadership go hand in hand. Trying to separate them in an organizational context will bring more harm than good. Both co-exist and complement each other. A good manager ought to have leadership skills to help in inspiring and motivating his subordinates towards achieving the organization’s goals. A good leader will also be faced with the responsibility to manage, which also calls for some management skills.
