Importance of Leadership in Managing Change

This assignment will analytically assess the statement “Leadership is the most important factor in Managing Change”. Firstly it will look at defining leadership, and will make a comparison of leadership versus management. It will discuss the importance of leadership and its role in managing change. The essay will consider the strength and weaknesses of the current theories and models exploring the leadership impact on change within organisations. The essay will also consider the key principles to change management as well as the reason why we experience resistance to change within organisations. It will outline key theory in relation to both successful and non-successful change management implementation and will also consider some process and solution to overcoming the common error in change management. Armstrong (2011) defines leadership as “…the process of setting direction and ensuring that the members of the leader’s organization or team give of their best to achieve the desired result. It is about getting people to go where you want them to go, gaining their commitment, and motivating them to achieve their goals. Armstrong believes that leadership has three essential roles, which focus on defining the task, achieving the task and maintaining effective relationship. (p.117) Leadership is the act of guiding, directing and mentoring a group or another individual to achieve a shared goal. When looking at leadership versus management Grint notes that management is traditionally about ‘executing routines and maintaining organizational stability’ where as ‘leadership is concerned with direction setting, with novelty and is essentially linked to change, movement and persuasion’ (Grint 2005 P15). In smaller organisations, especially third sector organisations the delineation of roles may not be as distinct as this suggests; they may be more blurred and interchangeable. Adair suggests that ‘leadership and management are different concepts but they overlap