Tag Archives: leadership and management

Leadership

Leadership and Management – Do We Need One More Than the Other?

Is there a difference between management and leadership? Differing opinions abound, though most experts do indeed distinguish between the two. This brief article examines the key characteristics associated with effective management and leadership behavior in the workplace and makes a case for the necessity of both skill sets, though in varying degrees at times, for organizational excellence.

Synonymous?

As mentioned above, some experts think of leadership and management as synonymous terms, using them interchangeably when discussing the subject. Others view these terms as very different indeed – almost as extreme opposites, with very little overlap. A third position is one that seems most sensible to us – that while differences between leadership and management exist, perhaps there are times when the two can and do overlap and that we often need both to achieve excellence.

Doing the right thing vs. doing things right

An old and well-known proverb states that leadership is, “doing the right thing,” while management is “doing things right.” While an obvious overgeneralization, this distinction presents a useful starting place for thoughtful consideration of the similarities and differences between effective management and leadership behavior. Review of the literature lead to development of the comparisons below which outline some of the major attempts to describe the two fields in the simplest of terms:

– The Leader focuses on Alignment; the Manager on Organization.
– The Leader focuses on Vision/Direction; the Manager on Process Control.
– The Leader focuses on the Big Picture; the Manager on the Details The Leader has a Strategic focus; the Manager a Tactical one.
– The Leader has his/her eye on the Horizon; the Manager has an eye on the Bottom Line The Leader is all about Change; the Manager is all about Stability
– The Leader Challenges the Status Quo; the Manager accepts the Status Quo
– The Leader is comfortable with Informality; the Manager operates with Formality
– The Leader is focused on Effectiveness; the Manager on Efficiency
– The Leader focuses on Styles and Approach; the Manager focuses on Skills
– The Leader Releases Potential; the Manager Uses Existing Abilities
– The Leader mainly uses the Power of Influence; the Manager mainly uses the Power of Authority
– The Leader Facilitate Decisions; the Manager Makes Decisions
– The Leader Investigates Reality; the Manager Accepts Reality
– The Leader asks “why” and “what”; the Manager asks “how” and “when”

Which is best?

By laying out the two functions side-by-side like this some clarity about the terms starts to emerge. Exclusion of any skill or ability can negatively impact success, and so the game becomes more about drawing on both skill sets over time, in differing proportion. Hence, we can see that both leadership and management are important. But can we now determine in what proportion, in most circumstances?

Moving up the organizational ladder

Another factor to consider is that of positional responsibility within the organization. Classic theory tells us that management (tactical skills) is more critical to success at lower and mid-levels of management while leadership (strategic abilities) is used more often at senior or upper management levels. While this simple differentiation presents another gross generalization, it can start us thinking about how individual roles might take on a given emphasis in one direction or another.

Mixing and matching

Another way to look at split and degree of emphasis is to put leadership and management into a classic, four-quadrant relationship grid, and looking at the resulting combinations of high and low skills. In this way one can examine the resulting interaction, or even “style” that occurs as a result of the expression of high and low levels of each variable as we shown below.

* Strong Leadership but Weak Management Visions detached from reality Alignment without organisation Multiple projects culture slowly emerges Strategies lack support and formal planning

* Strong Leadership and Strong Management Inspirational visions and strategies Widespread organisational alignment Integrated planning and control of resources Full employee empowerment and commitment

* Weak Leadership and Weak Management No vision or strategies Poor planning and resource allocation Out of control processes Employee disaffection and frustration

* Weak Leadership and Strong Management Processes grow more unwieldy and/or bureaucratic Over-specialisation/standardization More policies and procedures evolve Controls stifle creativity/innovation

Strong/ Strong is Optimal

It is now quite clear that, in most cases, both strong leadership and strong management are desirable, and that one is not necessarily more important than the other. Given this conclusion, the focus shifts to evaluation of the question of whether we have enough good management behavior, and enough good leadership behavior in order to thrive and move ahead.

How much is good enough?

Assuming that the organization is not occupying the bottom left corner of the previous relationship grid, if we need to add more leadership then the emphasis will be on greater use of the communication process (in both directions), pulling people together and creating more widespread team commitment (among other things). If, on the other hand, we need to add more management, then the emphasis will be on greater standardization or specialization, the establishment of more formal structures and greater control of systems (among other things.

Summing up Ultimately, organizational success rests on a healthy balance of leadership and management and we need to learn how to make sure we have enough of each and in the right proportion for the circumstances. To learn more about this topic, visit our Leadership and Management Forum [out] at the ReadytoManage Webstore. Individuals interested in learning more about their own Management and Leadership Skills may be interested in checking out the Leadership Effectiveness profile and the Management Effectiveness Profile, both of which can be found in the Leadership and Management Forum or in the webstore.

This article was written by Dr Jon Warner of WCOD and Ready To Manage Inc. Jon is an experienced management consultant and executive coach with over 20 years experience in assisting individuals of all types and at all levels of management. He is also an experienced author having published several books in the leadership, management and coaching areas, as well developing several assessment instruments including the Leadership Effective Profile and the Management Effectiveness Profile. Jon has an MBA and PhD in Organizational Psychology. He can be reached at Jon@OD-center.org.

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Jon_Warner/251706

 

Leadership

Define Leadership and Exercise it – The Missing Key Success Factor in Change Management

How you define and exercise leadership in the present climate will be a significant determinant in your organisation’s fortunes – and especially in the context of change management.

Let’s define leadership: Leadership is the process by which a person influences others to accomplish an objective. Leaders have a vision that they share with others. It is the leader who binds the organisation together with beliefs, values and knowledge… and who makes it more cohesive and coherent.

Leadership is also defined as a process that…motivates people to excel in the field in which they are working.

Is this you? Is this your direct up-line report?

So can leadership be taught?

Many would say that leadership qualities are not inborn but can be developed gradually through education and self-study. Personally I am not so sure about that.

The current assumption is that leadership can be taught. There are very many many courses, seminars and books on leadership and a big demand for training to develop leadership skills.

On the basis of my life experience and as I define leadership – it is my view that you can only teach leadership skills to someone who has the latent [and maybe unrecognised and unacknowledged] potential to be a leader.

Management skills can be taught to just about anyone of at least average intelligence and education [and in saying that I am not denigrating management]. However, a brief review of the differences between leadership and management suggests that leadership owes as least as much to “nature” as it does to “nurture”.

It may not be a popular thing to say but in my experience – most people would rather be led than lead. In my experience – the vast majority of people are followers and not leaders and very happy to remain so. Leaders are a very small percentage of the population maybe less than 1% and really strong leaders with the potential to really change things [for better or worse] probably less than 0.1%.

Leadership versus management – some useful points of comparison

– Leaders are apparent – Managers are appointed
– Leaders cope with change – Managers cope with complexity
– Leaders set direction – Managers plan
– Leaders press for change – Managers promote stability
– Leaders are visionary, inspirational and have eye to the future -Managers are operational, hands on, and based in the ‘now’
– Leading is concerned with future direction – Managing is concerned with uncertain conditions: implementation, order, efficiency and effectiveness
– Leadership is strategic – Management is operational
– Leaders set the direction – Managers develop the capacity to achieve the plan
– Leaders motivate and inspire – Managers control and problem solve
– Leaders need to ‘get on the balcony’ to spot operational and strategic patterns within the organisation – Managers get caught up on the field of action.
– Leadership defines the culture of the organisation – Management instills the culture in the organisation

Leadership in change management

Clearly both sets of skills are needed.

But so often in change management situations the emphasis is on the process and the management of the situation and not the leadership.

The leadership characteristics outline above are crucial for the fulfillment of a change programme director / leader role – leading [and being seen to lead and own] the whole change initiative.

How we define leadership, how we understand it and how we exercise it, is of paramount importance in the current economic and business climate as the quality of your leadership could be a major factor in determining your company’s fortunes – and especially in a change management situation. And this is where the properly applied leadership skills are exercised to best effect when employing the holistic and wide view perspective of a programme based approach to change management.

For more on this: “Define and exercise leadership”

Equip yourself to avoid the 70% failure rate of all change initiatives with the “Practitioners’ Masterclass – Leading your people through change, putting it all together and managing the whole messy business.”

Stephen Warrilow, based in Bristol, works with companies across the UK providing specialist support to directors delivery significant change initiatives. Stephen has 25 years cross sector experience with 100+ companies in mid range corporate, larger SME and corporate environments.

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Stephen_Warrilow/361805

 

Leadership

The Fundamental Purpose of Leadership

It’s time to question the traditional assumption of leadership’s fundamental purpose. The textbook account focuses on the leader’s role in maximizing employee performance. All the decades of writing about leadership style beginning over 50 years ago focuses on how different styles affect the motivation and productivity of employees. When we question the conventional purpose of leadership and offer a different foundation, we get a very different conception of leadership. Until we recognize the need for a radical shift in perspective, our vision of leadership will remain stuck in the past.

Having an internal focus on employee performance was acceptable for leadership prior to the 1970’s. But since the success of the Japanese commercial invasion, business has increasingly operated in an era of hyper-competition where rapid innovation changes whole markets overnight. In the old days of leadership theory, business was not so competitive. Then, business’s only task was to execute as cost effectively and profitably as possible. Today, there is also the need for businesses to be constantly re-inventing themselves, to be continuously creating new futures. For leaders to be successful now, they must have an external focus.

The new purpose of leaders is to ensure that new futures are created as rapidly as their external markets evolve. All organizations now have two equally important tasks: to deliver today’s results and to create the future. The principle of division of labor suggests that we need two separate functions for these very different tasks. Management needs to be upgraded from a narrowly controlling, mechanistic function to take care of today’s business, leaving leadership to champion changes to enhance competitive advantage.

So, what are the implications of this shift in emphasis? Well, if your sole reason for being is to maximize employee productivity, you need to be in charge of the people whose performance you want to improve. You need a formal position of authority over them. You need the authority to promote, move, develop, train and pay in accordance with merit. People can be motivated by informal leaders but none of the other productivity-enhancing decisions can be made without formal authority.

Not so with the new leadership. Promoting new products, services or better processes can be done by anyone, regardless of their formal roles. Even a consumer group criticizing an existing product line could show leadership from the outside to the organization. This new conception of leadership is the only way to make sense of bottom-up leadership. If leadership is merely the successful promotion of new products, then front-line employees can do it. The Sony employee who invented PlayStation is a good example. He showed bottom-up leadership to the senior executives at Sony whose initial reaction to the idea of PlayStation was to protest that Sony doesn’t do toys.

The role of senior executives is now more multifaceted. They need to both lead and manage. But leadership, as conceived here, has nothing to do with motivating employees to perform better, contrary to the textbook account. So-called transformational leadership became popular because it was felt that employees needed to be really inspired to give of their best. But now, we need to shift everything to do with motivating employees to management, leaving leadership free to promote enhancements to competitive advantage. Why? Because we need a definition of leadership that makes sense of how leadership can be shown bottom-up which has nothing to do with motivating employees to work harder. The sole purpose of leadership, therefore, is to promote new directions. It is management’s job to execute them.

Leaders must have an external focus to be effective; managers can focus internally. Both leadership and management are equally essential organizational functions, but only management is a formal role. Leadership is an informal, occasional act, like creativity, not a role. Senior executives are managers by virtue of their roles, not leaders. If their businesses are operating successfully and don’t need innovation or process improvements to succeed, then these organizations don’t need any leadership. This is a second radical implication of the new vision of leadership, the first one being that leadership has nothing to do with managing people or getting things done through them.

Keep in mind that, if leadership equates to the successful promotion of new products, services or process improvements, and if anyone can do it regardless of position, then employees with no one reporting to them can show leadership. This is a liberating conclusion, but one that has revolutionary implications for our understanding of leadership.

See http://www.leadersdirect.com for more information on this and related topics. Mitch McCrimmon’s latest book, Burn! 7 Leadership Myths in Ashes was published in 2006.

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Mitch_McCrimmon/79532