Blurred Leadership Styles

THE DIFFERERNCE IN OUTLOOK FOR MANAGERS
AND LEADERS

By Anthony Davis During my vast study of managers and leaders within different organizations, I have discovered that they play very different roles. Often the lines of effective management and effective leadership get blurred. Though there is in fact some overlap between the two roles, they actually draw on different, and sometimes contradictory, qualities. Here is how management and leadership styles differ across several categories such as personality, goals, strategy, qualifications and experience, and relationship to employees. When it comes to personality, managers tend to seek comfort and stability both in their personal and professional lives. They are generally adverse to risk and prefer to preserve the status quo. Finally, those who do well in a management position tend to be detailed-oriented and good at things that require organization. Leaders, on the other hand, are quite comfortable with significant amounts of risk and change as long as it helps them pursue their goals. They also naturally embrace the difficulties and challenges that they must overcome in order to achieve these goals. Finally, those who excel in leadership positions tend to be charismatic free-thinkers who are more comfortable
thinking outside of the box instead of in it. The goals of managers and leaders are different within an organization. The goal of an effective manager is to maximize production within the current system of an organization through careful organizing, planning, and controlling. In other words, managers are trying to get the job at hand done. The goal of an effective leader is to work on a system instead of in it. They are not just concerned with getting the job done, they seek to enhance the whole process in a way that will benefit both the employees and the company as a whole. As far as experience and qualifications are concerned, management ranks are filled with people who have slowly worked their way up the corporate ladder. Good managers tend to bring to their positions a lot of technical experience and a solid understanding of how the systems in their company work. On the other hand, it is possible that an effective leader will lack much of the experience that management has acquired. What leaders bring instead is a fresh outlook, new ideas, and inspiration. When it comes to strategy, success in management means sticking to company policy and working on maximizing output while reducing inefficiency. Managers take a formal and rational approach to their jobs. They rely heavily on their own abilities to analyze data, delegate work, and in general control the flow of production and performance. Success in leadership is defined by the leader's ability to transform the business and empower its employees. Leaders are radical thinkers who follow their own intuition to seek out new opportunities. In order to be successful, leaders will enlist the help and support of the employees in their charge. Finally, when it comes to relationship with employees, which I believe is the most important of all the categories.
Managers generally take an authoritarian approach when it comes to their subordinates. In other words, a manager says and the employees are expected to do as they are told. At the end of the day, it is also the manager who takes the credit for a job well done. A leader, on the other hand, seeks to inspire, coach and empower; people will naturally and loyally follow. Unlike the manager, a leader's approach to employees is less formal. As mentioned above, leaders are more open to enlisting the help and support of of their followers and bestowing credit on others where credit is
due. I feel that leadership responsibility is to identify what the change initiatives need to be in conjunction with employees, customers and suppliers while management's responsibility is to ensure effective implementation of those initiatives. Leadership also focuses primarily on people, performance, and possibilities. In its most obvious form, leadership manifests itself in the future focus orientation of individuals and their behavior toward the importance of people. There is an inherent assumption by leaders that the capability of people is the most critical point of leverage in producing not only excellent, consistent results, but also in driving significant change for future success while meeting the urgent and immediate creative needs of the organization. Quoting Warren Bennis from his book, “On Becoming a Leader,” “Managers are people who do things right, while leaders are people who do the right things. Bennis also wrote that "there is a profound difference between management and leadership, and both are important. To manage means to bring about, to accomplish, to have charge of or responsibility for, to conduct. Leading is influencing, guiding in a direction, course, action, opinion.” This is not to say that management is bad and leadership is good, what it does say is that both are needed and both are different. While the ideal is a blend of both in one individual, the reality is that individuals are far more likely to lean in one direction or the other.