Leadership And Management

Leadership and Management

Leadership and management are two ideas that are often used randomly. However, these words actually describe two different concepts. Both are vital for success in a business environment.

* The differences between management and leadership

Management: is dealing with complexity, "complication". The main aim of a manager is to maximize the output of the organization through administrative implementation. To achieve this, managers must use the following four functions: Controlling, Planning, Leading and organizing. Without good management, enterprises tend to be disorganized. Good management brings the organization to a level of stability, and obtains an amount of quality and profitability.

Leadership: is about coping with change. Many changes in the recent decades have made the leadership an important concept, such as rapid growth in the world economy, globalization, and international competition. As a result leadership demand had increased. Leader is born to be a managers, it can learn some of the skills up to a specific point.

* Setting a direction versus planning and budgeting

Setting a direction is not the same as planning or long term planning. Planning is function used by the managers, so they can get ordered results. Setting a direction is a process used by the leaders, it is broader than the planning, and it creates a vision and strategies. Visions are unexplained clearly, but once they are developed in a good business direction they can produce the right outcome. It is too difficult to come up with a vision and some times it is exhausting, but those people who accept these long term visions are risk takers, and seen as sophisticated thinkers. Long term planning is also a time consuming, because for example, in an unexpected environment become a standard every day, corporation can't cope in this situation with short term planning, as a result they have to start again thinking in a new plan, on the other hand, a long term planning can be used as a regular plan for every day changes. However, planning can be very effective when we use it as a complement with for a direction setting. At the same time, we can use direction setting as a controller of the right plan and the wrong one.

* Aligning people versus organizing and staffing

The feature of the organizations is interdependence, no one has a complete autonomy, and most employees are tied to many others by their work, technology, management system and hierarchy. Managers organize to create human systems that can implement plans as a accurately and efficiently as possible. This requires a number of potentially complex decisions, such as choose a structure of jobs and reporting relationships, staff it with individuals' suits to the job, provide training for those who need it, communicate plans for the workforce, and decide how much authority should they delegate and too whom. Aligning is more of a communications challenge than a design problem. The target population involves not only manager's subordinates but also bosses, peers, staff in other parts of the organization, suppliers, government officials, and even customers. Aligning also leads to empowerment in a way that organizing rarely does.

* Motivating people versus controlling and problem solving

Leaders believe that successful motivation can lead to strengthen the employees' problems. Leaders usually require a burst of energy, and they use inspiration and motivation to satisfy the basic human needs for achievement, a sense of belonging, recognition, self esteem, a feeling of a control over one's life, and the ability to live up to one's ideals. On the other hand, Managers try to identify the controlling mechanism by comparing the behavior system, employees' behavior and the production line, with plan of the organization, and based on they can take the right decision. The controlling mechanism is so central to management. Managers don't prefer a highly motivated or an inspired behavior. The managerial process must be as close as possible to a risk free.

Good Leaders motivate their