Management and Leadership
Effective managers are not necessarily true leaders and effective leaders may not
necessarily be in the role of management. However, both management and leadership are
important to an organization in order to achieve its goals. In this paper I will show the
difference between management and leadership, examine the role and responsibilities of
leaders in creating and maintaining a healthy organizational culture, and make two
recommendations that will help to create and maintain a healthy organizational culture.
The Difference Between Managing and Leading
There is a significant difference between managing and leading. The verb manage means
to handle or direct with a degree of skill, to make and keep compliant, or to exercise
executive, administrative, and supervisory direction of whereas the verb lead means to
guide on a way especially by going in advance, to direct on a course or in a direction, or to
serve as a channel for (Merriam-Websters OnLine Dictionary, 2005). Management is
getting people to do something because they have to do it and leadership is getting people
to do something because they want to do it. Bolton (2005) sums up the differences
between management and leadership. Management involves planning and budgeting,
organizing and staffing, and controlling and problem-solving. However, leadership
involves establishing direction, aligning people, and motivating and inspiring.
The importance of leading is enormous but that does not mean managing is not important.
Management and leadership are both vital to an organization. “To highlight the need for
more leadership is not to minimize the importance of management or managers. It is to say
that leadership involves unique processes that are distinguishable from basic management
processes” (Bateman & Snell, 2004). It is also important to point out that even though
managing and leading involve different processes, it is not necessarily different people
who perform these processes. One person can perform both, one, or none of these
processes. Though the most successful person is one who can perform both managerial and
leadership processes efficiently.
A leaders job is to make the vision of the company clear to others and influence them to
follow that vision. Management: The competitive landscape (6th ed.), provides some good
examples to understanding leadership and communicating the vision of an organization.
The first example is a puzzle; one looks at the picture on the outside of the box in order to
putit together because it provides direction, a clear picture of the outcome. The other
example is a slide projector, in order to see the presentation; the projector must be in focus.
