Comparison and Contrast the Term Management and Leadership

Comparison and Contrast the term Management and Leadership

Introduction

Leadership and management must go hand in hand. However, people often misunderstand the concept of management and leadership. Some people believes that management and leadership are similar with one another as these two terms share many similar characteristics. Both terms are not the same thing, they differ in their meaning. It has different in purpose, but it is necessarily linked, and complementary. If the management and leadership will be separated, there is a tendency that it might cause problems in the organization.

Direction

The managers and leaders have different approaches in providing direction to their people. For a manager, they are more task oriented in giving direction than the leaders. They prefer to define roles and set goals not just for themselves, but also to their employees in providing direction. For an instance, managers were able to help their employees to understand what the organization is expecting from them. In this case, employees manage their activities for the managers to accomplish their business objectives. Managers tend to establish coordination in delivering their direction. Also, taking responsibility for decisions, setting short- and long-term strategic goals and training employees to perform their assigned tasks are the duties of a manager (Spahr, 2015).

While leaders are considered as a people oriented. They often focus on human aspect in executing a task. Furthermore, they are more concerned about creating the easiest task for people involved (Gill, 2016). In organization nowadays, leaders are more focus on the needs of the people around them in making direction. They often give importance to the feelings, the situation as well as the happiness of his or her employees, rather than on their to-do list.

Alignment

Managers and leaders are different when it comes to their alignment. In fact, individuals have different approach in creating alignment. A fully aligned workforce is important in achieving organization’s success. For a manager, they often manage work. According to Victor Lipman (2013), managers tend to divides the work into manageable activities. For this reason, they were able to increase the productivity in the organization. Managers assign specific individuals to accomplish the tasks that need to be done. In organizations, people are considered as an important asset of the company. Manager trains their employees to be aligned with the company’s goals and objectives.

For leaders, they perceived alignment through leading the people. Leaders lead the employees to achieve the company’s well-defined attainable goals. They improve their alignment through variety of means. Aside from leading the people, leaders also focus on improving and ensuring competitive advantage and customer value (Llopis, 2014). Most of the companies nowadays focus their goals on their performance and good image to the public. In this case, they establish clearly defined and aligned metrics for the organization.

Relationships

For both managers and leaders, relationship with their employees is important. Establishing relationship with their employees will help the managers and leaders reach out with their employees. They were able to build connection and communicate with the people effectively in this way. When it comes to the manager, they are responsible for communicating the rules and philosophies of their company to their employees. The relationship establish by the manager to their employees were identified through the hierarchical management system. Managers are good at establishing communication, motivating and inspiring the employees, as well as encourage employees towards a higher level of productivity.

In contrast to the managers, leaders tend to focus on interpersonal relationships. They perceived relationship as an important factor in promoting promising individuals within the company in order to foster innovation (Sun, 2016). As they establish their relationship with their people, they were able to influence the people to work willingly for group objectives.

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