Leadership vs management

Leadership vs. Managers     

There is a lot written about the leadership vs. management debate- and both play a role in motivating people and teams to achieve objectives.  

Leaders set goals and direction; they are visionaries and can work with their teams to lead them in a direction. Managers specialise in conformance to the standard, organising and directing to achieve directions and objectives.

Many people are both – controlling systems and working towards standards at the same time as leading and inspiring their team to achieve.

As a manager we planning, budgeting, organising, controlling, coordinating, using resources and managing time, decision making and problem solving.

As a leader we lead through Vision, motivation, inspiration, persuasion, team work, building relationship, listening, counselling, coaching, teaching and mentoring. As employees we may be expected to be a leader where we do the leading, inspiring and pushing or we may be expected to be a manager following directions and making sure things get done.

 

The question for you is what does your role expect of you?

I tend to think that often we lean one way or the other depended on our personalities and the situation.  and sometimes the situation pushes us to do something we might have help back on.

Situational Leaders                                                            

So to we have good leaders who emerge as situational leaders and seem insignificant until the right situation arises – Winston Churchill, 9/11 Rudy Giuliani even possible Mike Baird with the recent siege in Sydney.

Are we all leaders in our own right – but what do we do about it? Are we conscious of our roles and how we play them? 

Are we a push on or direction follower manager?  Do we have a blurred vision of what are role is, what a leader is and what a manager is and what is being expected of us? 

Does one wash away the other?

Servant /follower leadership;

I am a great believer that to be a good leader we must also be a good follow up. I have just read an article on the importance of servant leadership by Sharlyn Lauby who talks about the basic competences associated with servant leadership.

1.    Commitment to developing people – leaders’ help others become good leaders

2.    Empathy- leaders not only identify with others, but accept them for who they are.

3.    Listening – a leader responds to a problem by listening first

4.    Conceptualization- leaders articulate a clear vision with passion, which engages and energises the rest of the team.

5.    Foresight- leaders can sense the future.  – Gives leaders their lead.  As leaders we must use good decision making skills. and we should remember that a lack of decision making can be perceived as an ethical failure.

6.    Awareness- perception is reality.  Leaders must open the doors of perception and see what’s inside. This can be pretty scary.  But its necessary to provide reality and see things in perspective.

As small business owners we have to play the role of both all the time in our business. 

But I think we need to put more emphasis on innovation as leaders we need to develop new business models that influence both the way we do business and the way we can influence(market) to the community to accept new models.  

We need their acceptance to remain profitable.

We also need to maintain more small businesses to be profitable but that is possible another question around business owners being influences to spend time own on learning? Are we leaders or are we managers or both?