Leadership and management are often considered synonymous. But it is essential to understand the relationships and the differences between leadership and management.
People often consider themselves as a leader when promoted to a managerial role. There are important distinctions between managing and leading people, although they are both complementary to each other.
To further comprehend the two concepts, read the following these three sections
Comparison of Leadership and Management
Here, we will compare leadership and management based on following six attributes;
1. Definition
- Leadership is a skill to lead people through examples, vision and motivation
- Management is a skill to organize and lead people on the basis of principles and procedures
2. Emphasis
- Leader gives emphasis on trust, inspiration and vision
- Managers give emphasis on managing people, procedures, and policies in a systematic way
3. Strategy
- Leaders strategies on building community based on proactive actions
- Managers strategies on building department, organization or procedures based on reactive actions
4. Perspective
- Leadership is about proactive vision and mission
- Management is about short term and long term goals
5. Power
- Leadership is an influence of personal power
- Management is about ruling & directing on the basis of positional power
6. Focus
- Leadership focuses on motivation, encouragement, vision and change
- Management focuses on encouragement, stability, policy and efficiency
Relationship Between Leadership and Management
According to John Paul Kotter; Emeritus Professor of Leadership at Harvard Business School, “All managers must know how to lead and how to manage.”
Good management includes all aspects of good leadership and good leadership includes all aspects of good management. Both are indispensable to each other. Here are few relationships between leadership and management;
- Leaders create vision & mission, management creates policies and procedures to execute the vision
- They focus on inspiration & motivation based vision, but it is the responsibility of management to keep the motivation intact through execution
- Leaders involve management to take action, but management is about timely action, precise calculation, and efficient execution
- Leadership is about seeking and understanding new possibilities, but managers maximize organizational output through managerial performance
A successful organization can’t maximize output without strong leadership and great management. A leader devoid of management skill and a manager lacing any leadership skill can cause failure of an organization.
Leadership develops over time through constant practice and dedication; management can be learned, but it is essential to learn basic leadership skill to maximize managerial competency.
Differences Between Leadership and Management
The main difference between leadership & management is that leaders have people to follow and managers have people to work for them.
Leadership is not a lesson to be taught, it is quality to develop over a period of time, and the persons who own these qualities are called as leaders, whereas a person who possesses a power to execute managerial skills is called a manager.
Here are a few distinctions which differ from a leader from a manager, but a good manager has all the qualities a leader boasts.
- Leadership is about doing the right thing, management is about doing things right
- Management is an activity of involving people by directing, arranging, organizing and executing towards achieving an objective; whereas leadership is an activity to motivating, guiding and directing people to work together towards achieving an objective
- Leadership demands foresightedness and out of box thinking, management demands the efficient execution of processes, policies, and objective
- Management is based on control, rules, and workers under them; leadership is based on trust, influence, and followers.
- A leader thinks about bringing change, innovation; on the other hand, managers take responsibility for stability, progress, and outcome
- Managers follow the organization’s policies and procedures; on the other hand, leaders follow their own instincts
- Leadership is about taking risks, management is about controlling the risks
- Leaders grow on personal development, but a manager might need to depend on professional development in spite of the personal development
In the new world of changing technology and economy, people are no longer COGS in business types of machinery. It is crucial to understand that values are increasingly coming from knowledge of people in the new world.
Managers often need to define task and purpose to the subordinates and to achieve these, managers must organize workers to increase manpower utilization and organizational efficiency.
To handle the increasing demand for ‘knowledge workers’, management guru Peter Drucker recognized the truth and he counsels the managers to develops leadership skill & leaders to develop management skill as well.
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Ashim, the Founder of MindWiper, loves to learn, share, and educate various dimensions of life skills development. After graduating with an engineering degree, he worked with major ICT industries in India and finally he followed his dream to integrate technology for Cognitive Skills & Life Skills Development.