VIEWPOINT
Managers need to be good leaders too
What do leaders really do? Are they managers or different from them? Let us know the underlying principle of that.
Leadership is different from management, but not for the reason most people think. Leadership is not mystical or mysterious. It has nothing to do with having “charisma” or other exotic personality traits. It is not the province of a chosen few.
Rather, leadership and management are two distinctive and complementary systems of action. Each has its own function and characteristic activities. Both are necessary for success in an increasingly complex and competitive business environment.
Most of today’s business environment is over-managed and under-led. It needs to develop its capacity to exercise leadership. Successful business does not wait for a leader to come along. They actively seek out people with leadership potential and expose them to develop that potential.
There are a few essentials to be taken care of while selecting a leader. They are, selection with care, nurturing them with sincerity and encouraging them with positive attitude. Every executive does not necessarily have good leading and managing capability. Some people have the capacity to become excellent managers but not strong leaders.
Others have great leadership potential but have great difficulty becoming strong managers. But when it comes to preparing people for executive jobs, the saying “people cannot manage and lead” is ignored. On the contrary, they try to develop a leader-manager. Once companies/organisations understand the fundamental difference between leadership and management, they begin to groom their top people to provide both.
The difference
Management is about coping with complexity, whereas leadership is about coping with change. Managerial practices and procedures are responses to significant developments. Good management brings a degree of order and consistency to key dimensions like the quality and profitability of products to companies.
Leadership has become more important and viable in recent years of competition. Faster technological change, greater international competition, and deregulation of markets are some of the major factors that have contributed to this change.
The net result of success is only 5 to 10 percent and this is no longer a formula for success. Major changes are necessary to survive and compete effectively in this new environment.
These different functions – coping with complexity and coping with change-shape the characteristic activities of management and leadership. Each system of action involves: (1) deciding what needs to be done, (2) creating networks of people, and (3) relationships that can accomplish an agenda, and then trying to ensure that those people actually do the job. But each accomplishes these three tasks in different ways.
Organisations manage complexity first by planning and budgeting, setting targets or goals for future, establishing detailed steps for achieving those goals, and then allocating resources to accomplish those plans.
On the contrary, leading an organisation to constructive change begins by setting a direction, developing a vision of the future along with strategies for producing the changes needed to achieve that vision.
Management develops the capacity to achieve its plan by organising and staffing-creating an organisational structure. It sets jobs for accomplishing plan requirement with qualified staff, communicating the plan to those people, and delegating responsibility for carrying out the plan, executing the plan, monitoring it and finally evaluating it. On the other hand, leadership aligns people.
It can be stated that, management ensures plan accomplishment by monitoring and leadership ensures right direction of people with motivation and inspiration.
A sincere effort toward these activities certainly helps organisations grow and develop.
We have to remember that strong leadership with weak management is no better, and is sometimes worse, than the reverse. The real challenge is to combine strong leadership and strong management and use each to balance the other.
DR. RATNA PUROHIT
faqs@cnkonline.com
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