Benefits and Drawbacks of the Role of Managers and Leaders
The difference between leaders and managers lies in the conceptions held by them. Managers seek stability and control and try to resolve the problems faced by the organization quickly, sometimes even before the significance of the problem is fully understood by them. On the other hand leaders can tolerate lack of structure and chaos. In order to understand issues more comprehensively, leaders are willing to delay the closure. This way there is a lot of things which the business leaders in common with scientists, artists and other creative thinkers as compared to managers (Kotter, 2001). To become successful both leaders and managers are required by the organizations but for developing both, organizations need to reduce their focus on strategic exercises and logic and create and environment which allows imagination and creativity to flourish (Neely and Adams, 2000).
Characteristics of Leaders:
Leadership is a process through which individual can influence a group of individual with a view to achieve a common objective. Going by the various definition of leadership we can say that it is a process which involves influence and takes place in a group context. It also involves the achievement of goals. There are certain characteristics which are found in leaders. These include confidence, creativity, empathetic listening skill, awareness of realistic condition, maintaining a balance between the needs of the individual and team needs. Leaders are visionaries with strong self esteem, trust, service mentality, sincerity, sense of priorities and a willingness to share responsibility. Leaders also have technical or contextual expertise and they are ready to share credit or recognition (Zaleznik, 1997).
An effective leader needs four basic characteristics which are:
(i) Honesty: An effective leader should be truthful and trust worthy and should also have integrity and character. Honesty of the leader can be measured from the degree of the consistency which is present between what he says and what he does in reality. Employees are not likely to trust people who do not demonstrate their ethics, values and standards of behavior. Trust is essential in leadership and to be trusted, a leader needs to demonstrate trust first of all.
(ii) Competence: An effective leader should be productive, capable, efficient and through. Competence does not necessarily relate with the technical abilities of the leader but is more related with a feeling or belief held by the followers in the abilities of their leader.
(iii) Forward Looking: A leader needs to be visionary, foresighted and concerned about future. He should also have a sense of direction. Employees tend to follow leaders whom they believe that they know what they are doing.
(iv) Inspiring: A leaders should also be enthusiastic, uplifting, cheerful, energetic and positive about the future. Only having a dream or vision of future is not enough. The leader should also inspire his followers. The vision of the leader has to be communicated the followers and they should be inspired to work for the achievement of the goal. The leader should have the ability to excite the employees and get them moving towards the achievement of the goals.
On the other hand effective manager have creativity, intuition, commitment, knowledge, versatility, discipline and focus. Managers have a vision for the future regarding the position, market share and competitive edge of the organization. Managers are not resistant to change and look at the changes in the organization as the healthy process. Managers are also specialized in recruitment, training and retaining the employees of the organization.
Characteristics of Managers:
(i) Creating Productive Environment:
Good managers should be capable a creating a productive environment and to achieve this purpose different approaches need to be adopted depending on the context. Managers need to encourage the employees to share ideas, work together and remain highly motivated.
(ii) Team Player:
A manager needs to the committed towards the working with a team to achieve the objective of the organization. Manager is not only concerned with his individual goals but is interested in the growth of business as this growth would result in benefit to the manager as well as the people working with him for the achievement of these goals (Yukl, 2010).
(iii) Ability to Delegate Effectively:
A good manager should have the ability to select the most suitable employees to give responsibility. Such delegation needs to be conducted in a way which ensures understanding. Managers also need to follow up through regular progress reports to ensure that the intended results are being achieved. Efficient managers can use delegation as a way to save their time and also use it as an important tool for upgrading the skills of the employees.
(iv). Adherence to Policies of Fairness:
Efficient managers always adhere to the policy of fairness while reviewing and assessing the performance of the employees. These policies are also followed by the managers while administering discipline and all other matters. An effective manager is completely impartial and scrupulously fair and bases his judgment on objective observation (Kotterman, 2006).
Leaders are heroes who are driven by a grand design and have intuitive flashes of insight. Managers on the other hand are problem solvers who achieve results by following cautiously the process of trial and error. While leaders try to alter the economic, political and human relationships, the managers strive to maintain the existing order. Leaders opt for risk and danger when they see an opportunity with high rewards (Northouse, 2007). Leaders also create new concepts, inspire people and want results. Managers do not like uncertainty. They utilize the present policies of the organization to achieve the organizational goals. Managers are more concerned with the process that can achieve results instead of the results. Leaders alter expectation and are driven by their personal goals. On the other hand managers focus on the goals of the organization. The need to confirm drives them and their goals are formed by the history and culture of the organization (Kotter, 1990).
Though sometimes the terms leader and manager are used as synonymously, leaders don’t need any managerial post to act as the leader. On the other hand, it is the responsibility of the manager to perform the functions which are vital for the achievement of organizational goals. These functions are planning, staffing, organizing, directing and controlling. To be an effective manager, traits of leadership are also required. Generally there can be attention between managers and leaders but in healthy organizations, the roles and responsibilities of leaders tend to fit together with the responsibilities of the managers. Although some times the functions of leaders and managers overlap but these two roles can be performed effectively in high performing organizations through well accepted strategic vision and strong communication (Bennis and Nanus, 2007).
Leaders in organization have a strategic vision and they inspired others to achieve this vision. They have the ability to motivate action for a common purpose and good leaders can also provide integrity along with this motivation. On the other hand managers excel in the art of execution. They implement the vision set by the leader and also ensure that policies and regulations are followed and the employees performed according to the expectations. A good manager maintains a high level of motivation among the employees can deliver results on time and ensure that the day to day operations confirmed with the overall approach of the organization regarding governance (House and Aditya, 1997).
Role and Responsibilities of Managers and Leaders:
There are several similarities in the role and responsibilities of leaders and managers in the organization. For example both roles involve working with people, influencing them and working towards the achievement of organizational goals. However there are certain differences between these two roles. While leadership is a concept which has been with us for many centuries, the concept of management has only been developed in the last hundred years, partly due to the rise of the industrial revolution (Capowski, 1994). Leadership and management both are important for organizations they different things.
The organizational structure helps in achieving the goals in such a way that they are in tune with or responsive to the environment of the organization. Managers become the focus of the organization because they keep the organization doing well without much change. But here it also needs to be considered that the environment of the organization keeps on changing. Organizations often miss to spot these changes because the managers generally tend to look inside than to look outside. The result is that the organizations become less in tune with their environment (Bass, 2010). These are the times when leaders are required who can ask questions like how can the organization become relevant again and how to make it more meaningful? Leaders try to bring their organizations more in tune with the realities of their environment and this process generally calls for changes in the structure, resources and relationships. This way the aim of leaders is to bring a renewed vitality in the organization. For example, the automakers were manufacturing large cars with gas guzzling engines in the 60s and the 70s but had to shift towards lighter cars which have more fuel efficient engines. The major auto makers of America were slow in understanding the shift in consumer preferences but the Japanese auto manufacturers were quick to cash in on the opportunity and started producing these cars in time.
A well balanced organization needs a mix of leaders and managers and the importance of great leaders along with first class managers is the same. While the management task is assigned to the managers, it is generally believed that they are responsible for achieving the goals of the organization through the functions like planning, budgeting, staffing and organizing. On the other hand leaders play the role of establishing the direction of the organization. They also align, motivate and inspire people. Some researchers feel that a leader has the soul, passion and creativity while a manager has the mind, rational and persistence. A leader can be flexible, inspiring, innovative, independent and courageous and on the other hand a manager is required to be analytical, consulting, authoritative, deliberate and stabilizing. While managing is about efficiency, leaders are more concerned with effectiveness. Managers ask how and leaders asked what and why. Managers are more concerned with controls, policies, procedures, structures and systems but the leaders are more concerned about trust. While leaders are more concerned with innovation and initiation, the managers are concerned with maintaining the status quo in the organization. Leaders are more creative, agile and adaptive and have the capacity to create to create a new vision and then translate that vision into reality.
Conclusion:
In the end we can say that managers and leaders have overlapping functions. Sometimes managers need to become leaders and set a tactical vision for a performance initiative or a project. At the same time there are many leaders at the executive level who need to manage the employees and also undertake these functions like writing status reports and coordinating budgets. In this way, although different task are performed by managers and leaders, their functions cross each other sometimes. It is also true that organizations cannot afford managers who cannot lead and leaders who cannot manage. Leaders in organizations generally occupy top management positions. In large companies ‘chief’ is added to their job title like the chief information officer, chief ethics officer or chief technology officer. Despite the profound difference between leaders and managers, both are important for the organizations.
References:
Bass, B. (2010). The Bass handbook of leadership: Theory, research, and managerial applications. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.
Bennis, W. G., & Nanus, B. (2007). Leaders: The strategies for taking charge. New York, NY: HarperCollins
Capowski, G., (1994), “Anatomy of a leader: where are the leader of tomorrow?”, Management Review, Vol. 83 Issue 3, p.10-18
House, R. J., & Aditya, R. N. (1997). The social scientific study of leadership: Quo vadis? Journal of Management, 23, 445-456
Kotter, J. (1990). A force for change: How leadership differs from management. New York: Free Press.
Kotter, J. P., (2001), “What leaders really do?”, Harvard Business Review, Vol. 79 Issue 11, p.85-96
Kotterman, J., (2006), “Leadership vs Management: What’s the difference?”, Journal for Quality & Participation, Vol. 29 Issue 2, p.13-17
Neely A., Adams C., (2000), “The Performance Prism to boost M&A Success”, Measuring Business Excellence, Vol. 4 No 3, p. 19-23
Northouse, P. (2007). Leadership theory and practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Yukl, G. (2010). Leadership in organizations (7th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Zaleznik, A. (1997). Managers and leaders: Are they different? Harvard Business Review, 55, 67-78.
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