The Difference Between Management And Leadership

Leadership and management are two notions that are often used interchangeably. However, these words actually describe two different concepts. In this section, we shall discuss these differences and explain why both terms are thought to be similar.

Leadership is a facet of management Differences In Perspectives Subordinate As A Leader Loyalty The Leader Is Followed. The Manager Rules Management Knows How It Works Conclusion References

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Leadership is a facet of management

Leadership is just one of the many assets a successful manager must possess. Care must be taken in distinguishing between the two concepts. The main aim of a manager is to maximise the output of the organisation through administrative implementation. To achieve this, managers must undertake the following functions:

• organisation
• planning
• staffing
• directing
• controlling

Leadership is just one important component of the directing function. A manager cannot just be a leader, he also needs formal authority to be effective. "For any quality initiative to take hold, senior management must be involved and act as a role model. This involvement cannot be delegated." [1]

In some circumstances, leadership is not required. For example, self motivated groups may not require a single leader and may find leaders dominating. The fact that a leader is not always required proves that leadership is just an asset and is not essential.

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Differences In Perspectives

Managers think incrementally, whilst leaders think radically. "Managers do things right, while leaders do the right thing." [2]. This means that managers do things by the book and follow company policy, while leaders follow their own intuition, which may in turn be of more benefit to the company. A leader is more emotional than a manager . "Men are governed by their emotions rather than their intelligence" [3]. This quotation illustrates why teams choose to follow leaders.

"Leaders stand out by being different. They question assumption and are suspicious of tradition. They seek out the truth and make decisions based on fact, not prejudice. They have a preference for innovation." [4]

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Subordinate As A Leader

Often with small groups, it is not the manager who emerges as the leader. In many cases it is a subordinate member with specific talents who leads the group in a certain direction. "Leaders must let vision, strategies, goals, and values be the guide-post for action and behaviour rather than attempting to control others." [5]

When a natural leader emerges in a group containing a manager, conflict may arise if they have different views. When a manager sees the group looking towards someone else for leadership he may feel his authority is being questioned.

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Loyalty

Groups are often more loyal to a leader than a manager. This loyalty is created by the leader taking responsibility in areas such as:

• Taking the blame when things go wrong.
• Celebrating group achievements, even minor ones.
• Giving credit where it is due.

"The leader must take a point of highlighting the successes within a team, using charts or graphs, with little presentations and fun ideas" [6]

"Leaders are observant and sensitive people. They know their team and develop mutual confidence within it." [7]

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The Leader Is Followed. The Manager Rules

A leader is someone who people naturally follow through their own choice, whereas a manager must be obeyed. A manager may only have obtained his position of authority through time and loyalty given to the company, not as a result of his leadership qualities. A leader may have no organisational skills, but his vision unites people behind him.

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Management Knows How It Works

Management usually consists of people who are experienced in their field, and who have worked their way up the company. A manager knows how each layer of the system works and may also possess a good technical knowledge. A leader can be a new arrival to a company who has bold, fresh, new ideas but might not have experience or wisdom.

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Conclusion

Managing and leading are two different ways of organising people. The manager uses a formal, rational method whilst the leader uses passion and stirs emotions. William Wallace is one excellent example of a brilliant leader but could never be thought of as the manager of the Scots!

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References

[1] Daniel. F. Predpall, ‘Developing Quality Improvement Processes In Consulting Engineering Firms’, Journal of Management in Engineering, pp 30-31, May-June 1994

[2] Richard Pascale, ‘ Managing on the Edge’, Penguin Book, pp 65, 1990

[3] John Fenton, ‘ 101 Ways to Boost Your Business Performance’, Mandarin Business, pp 113, 1990

[4] John Fenton, ‘ 101 Ways to Boost Your Business Performance’, Mandarin Business, pp 113, 1990

[5] Daniel. F. Predpall, ‘Developing Quality Improvement Processes In Consulting Engineering Firms’, Journal of Management in Engineering, pp 30-31, May-June 1994

[6] John Fenton, ‘ 101 Ways to Boost Your Business Performance’, Mandarin Business, pp 114, 1990

[7] John Fenton, ‘101 Ways to Boost Your Business Performance’, Mandarin Business, pp 113, 1990

Why does engineering/math/science education in the US suck?

If you studied math, science, or engineering at a four-year college in the US, much of what you learned is useless, forgotten, or obsolete. All that money, all that time, all that wasted talent. If all we lost were a few years, no big deal. But the really scary part is that we never learned what matters most to true experts in math, science, and engineering. We never really learned how to DO math, science, and engineering.

Toward the end of his life, legendary mathematician Jacques Hadamard asked 100 of the top scientists of his time how they did whatever it was that they did (math, physics, etc.) Hadamard's survey found a massive disconnect between how we teach math and science and how mathematicians and scientists actually work. The majority of his contemporaries apparently claimed that using the logical, left-brain symbols associated with their work was NOT how they did their work. These were simply the tools they used to communicate it. What they used to do the works was much... fuzzier. Intuition. Visualization. Sensation (Einstein talked of a kinesthetic element). Anthropomorphizing. Metaphors.

We are in sooooo much trouble.

What experts use to do their work are the things we don't teach. We focus almost exclusively on how to talk about the work. Obviously this doesn't mean nobody learns to do it... we have plenty of expert engineers, scientists, and mathematicians, who become great either in spite of faulty teaching or because they lucked out and had excellent, clueful instructors and mentors. But we also hear more and more teachers, experts, and employers railing against the sorry state of our advanced technical educations today. The problem is, many of these same teachers, experts, and employers have a tough time articulating what's wrong, let alone how to fix it.

And what do we do to try and improve things? We just do MORE of what's wrong. We redouble our efforts. We drill and test students even harder in facts and rote memorization. We work and test them even harder on using the tools for communication (e.g. code) rather than the tools for thought (e.g. intuition, visualization, etc.)

Our educational institutions--at every level--need drastic changes or we're all screwed. The generation of students we're turning out today need skills nobody really cared about 50, 40, even 20 years ago. Where we used to prepare students for a "job for life", now we must prepare students to be jobless. We must prepare them to think fast, learn faster, and unlearn even faster ("yes, that drug was the appropriate way to treat the XYZ disease, but that was so last week. THIS week we now realize it'll kill you.")

The Waterfall Model of education is failing like never before. We need Agile Learning.

Three of the many people who've been leading the charge on this are Roger Schank, Dan Pink (his "Whole New Mind" book is a must-read), and computing/learning guru Alan Kay. One of my favorite Alan Kay notions is something like this, "If you want to be a better programmer, take up the violin." He claims that the more time he spends playing music, the fresher and better his approaches to engineering become. He's an outspoken critic of engineering students focusing too early in their education, because he believes that with a more liberal arts education, you get metaphors and ways of thinking and seeing that are vital to your later engineering work.

I'll end this with two quotes:

From Jason Fried:
"Hire curious people. Even if they don't have the exact skill set you want, curious, passionate people can learn anything."

And from Jacques Hadamard:
" Logic merely sanctions the conquests of the intuition."

If intuition is the heart of what true experts do, then shouldn't we be trying to teach that? Or at the least, stop stifling and dissing it? And yes, I do believe that we can teach and inspire all those fuzzy things including intuition and even curiosity. But we are running out of time.

[UPDATE: Martin Polley brought up the TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson, and if you haven't seen it already--I urge you to check it out ASAP!

Mark Fowler was surprised that I didn't bring up the book What the Best College Teachers Do, and I can't believe I left it out of the post. I believe it is the single best book on helping someone learn. When we had our most recent author's bootcamp, it was the one book we gave to all attendees. Thanks Mark.

I highly recommend the comments to this post -- they're insightful on all sides, agreement and disagreement and all points in between. And before you tell me I'm advocating for throwing out fundamentals, memorization, facts, logic, etc... PLEASE look again at my venn diagram ; ) This is about brain balance, and addressing much more of the brain than just the narrow channels that are the parts of the brain that actually "talk." ]

Why Management?

Management is a critical function for every organization, and people trained in management play this important role in organizations of every size and type. The skills, techniques, and theories acquired by the management major leads to jobs in business, government, and the non-profit sector. People who plan to establish their own firms or to become part of a family owned firm also pursue a management major. Course work in this major helps individuals learn to:

motivate, lead, and develop others;

structure organizations capable of meeting both profit and social responsibility goals;

work well in accomplishing work individually and through others;

communicate accurately; and

develop a strategic perspective on the organization and its parts.

Skills that Management majors develop:

Interpersonal communication, negotiation, listening, managing, positive attitude, motivation, organization, leadership, ambition, team leadership, and critical thinking.

Leadership vs Management

Leadership and management are distinct concepts but the words are often used as though they have the same meaning. This confusion may arise from the fact that sometimes the same person is employed to do the job of leader and manager.

A leader’s job is to decide where the team they are leading is heading. A leader will set the ultimate aim, objective and goals for the team. They will then inspire and motivate the team to achieve the objectives set. This will involve reviewing progress and ensure that the team is on course to achieve the objectives set.

A manager’s job is to set how the team will achieve the objectives set by the leader. They will overcome any problems the team encounter and decide how to deal with complexity.

A simple way of illustrating the difference between leader and manager is to use the example of a team who are set the goal of building a path from point A to point B.

The leader’s job will be to

• Set the goal of building a path.
• Decide that the path will go from A to B.
• Inspire and motivate the team so that they want to build a path for their leader.
• Review progress as the path is built and ensure that the team are building the path from A to B.

The manager’s job will be to

• Plan the project and decide things such as budgets, pay and materials used.
• Implement plans and control building of the path.
• Organise the team and delegate tasks to them.
• Overcome any problems eg trees blocking the route where the path is to be built.

Another way of differentiating a leader from a manager is to think of someone known as a world leader for example Martin Luther King and think about what they did. You will discover that each of these leaders are great visionaries, and are able to inspire and motivate their audience. They will present their ideas and dreams to the world in a way that they feel appeals to the audience. They will give them an overview of the vision and will not set the small details of how their vision will be achieved. Instead the small details will be decided by other people. Other people will plan and manage the work needed to achieve the leader’s vision. The leader’s job is to continue motivating and ensuring that project is on course to achieve it’s objectives.

Simple gestures count the most

Bob Nelson

One of the best kept secrets in management today is the power of recognizing employees. Study after study has demonstrated that what employees most want is to be acknowledged for the job they do day in and day out. This recognition does not have to be anything fancy, in fact, the simpler and more direct, the better. One of the most motivating forms of recognition as reported by employees is very simple indeed: taking the time to personally thank an employee for something they did well. This seems very obvious yet when was the last time you did it? If you are typical, it has been some time. If this is the case, start thinking about who you will thank for his or her efforts today.

To be the most effective, the thank you should come as soon as possible after the achievement or desired activity has occurred. If you wait too long to thank a person, over time the gesture will lose its significance. Implicitly, the employee will figure that other things were more important to you than taking a few minutes with him or her.

You need to also be very specific about what you are praising the person for and why. Praisings that are too broad tend to seem insincere. But saying, "Thanks for staying late to finish those calculations I needed. It was critical for my meeting this morning," specifically says what and why an employee's effort was of value.

If you need a reminder, a form can be used. At Tektronix, Inc., the company instituted a simple way for managers and employees alike to focus on recognizing others for doing something right. Dubbed the "You Done Good Award," this simple certificate was printed in pads and could be given to anybody in the company from anybody else in the company. On it, individuals stated what was done, who did it and when, and then gave the certificate to the person.

The idea has caught on and is now part of life at Tektronix. Says one employee: "Even though people say nice things to you, it means something more when people take the time to write their name on a piece of paper and say it."

Another simple yet effective approach is to put notes on business cards. Hohn Plunkett, Director of Employment and Training for Cobb Electric Membership Corporation in Marietta, GA, says "People love to collect others' business cards. Simply carry a supply of your cards with you and as you "catch people doing something right," immediately write "Thanks," "Good job," "Keep it up" and what they specifically did in two to three words. Put the person's name on the card and sign it.

Although less personal, messages left on telephone voice-mail or computer e-mail can be also be effective. All these simple gestures indicate that you are not too busy to miss the fact that an employee has done something special.

As Ron Zemke, senior editor of Training magazine once observed: "Recognition is something a manager should be doing all the time -- it's a running dialogue with people." The act of delivering simple, direct praise for a job well done is so easy to do, yet so many managers do not do it. As a result they are robbing themselves and their employees of one of the most powerful forms by which to shape and reinforce desired performance -- and feel better in the process. Try it, you'll like it--and so will those with whom you work.

Making time for recognition

Bob Nelson

One of the most pervasive problems I encounter in working with managers is getting them to find time to practice employee praise and recognition. Managers are often too busy focusing on what's urgent--such as dealing with daily crises in their jobs--and as a result don't have any time left to focus on what's important--namely, the people they manage. This situation is unfortunate, as extensive research on employee motivation indicates that the most motivating incentives reported by employees are ones that are personally provided by one's manager--the most important of which is a personal thank you for a job well done. Yet in one study some 58 percent of employees report that their managers seldom, if ever, thank them for doing a good job when they do so.

The situation is made worse by the false perception on the part of many managers that they are, in fact, providing employees with plenty of praise and recognition. According to Aubrey Daniels, a leading authority on the topic of performance management, "Those managers who feel they do it (positive reinforcement) the most, in my experience, actually do it the least." That is, managers may have learned along the way that they need to be positive, but on a day-to-day basis they often are doing very little to catch their employees doing something right.

Worse yet, often the positive reinforcement they are practicing is incorrect, for example, providing individual feedback that is nonspecific or insincere, praising some employees while overlooking others that have also done good work, being overly general in their praise, or having their facts wrong about specific performance they want to acknowledge.

How can managers start praising their employees more? Like any behavioral change you have to find a way to make it habit--a natural part of your daily routine. For example, I've been successful at getting analytical, task-oriented managers to start praising employees more by getting them to think of their people part of their things to do list. I recommend that managers list the names of each person that reports to them on their weekly "to do" list and cross each person off the list once they have given him or her a praising based on that person's performance. For some managers, such a specific technique helps make the activity from being a general, intangible activity to a specific, finite action item--thus much easier to complete.

In another example, Hyler Bracey, president of The Atlanta Consulting Group, knew he wanted to praise employees more, but found his good intentions did not often translate to daily behavior. To correct this situation, he started putting five coins in his jacket pocket each morning and transferring a coin to another pocket each time during the day that he gave positive feedback to an employee. Within a few weeks the new habit took hold and praising employees became second nature to him. Says Bracey: "Praising employees truly works. There is so much more energy and enthusiasm in a workplace where praise has become ingrained in the manager."

Every manager needs to find forms of recognition they are willing to do. For some managers writing personal notes works; for other managers being visible and "managing by walking around" is the ticket. Still others might sanction a group celebration as is warranted.

The power of positive reinforcement can only occur as managers find time to put the principle into practice on a daily basis with each of their employees. Remember: "Good thoughts not delivered mean squat."

The power of suggestion

Bob Nelson

The average American worker makes 1.1 suggestions per year where he or she works today--one of the lowest suggestion rates of any industrialized nation.

Would you like more ideas at work? Ideas for saving money, improving customer service, streamlining processes and so forth? What business wouldn't? I'm convinced that every employee has at least one $50,000 idea inside of them. The trick is to find a way to get it out.

Boardroom Inc. in Greenwich, Conn., has found a way to get ideas out. It's a program they call "I Power" and they credit the suggestion program with a five-fold increase in their revenues in under four years--as well as untold benefit to the morale, energy and retention of their employees.

Each employee is asked to turn in two suggestions every week, which are evaluated the same week by an employee volunteer. For many of the suggestions, the evaluator says "What a great idea!" and then returns the idea to the person who suggested it with the implicit permission to proceed in implementing the idea. "Let us know how we can help!" After all, who has more energy for an idea than the person who initially came up with it?

As Martin Edelston, chairman and CEO of Boardroom says, "Sometimes the best idea can come from the newest, least experienced person on your staff." Like the hourly paid shipping clerk who suggested that the company consider trimming the paper size of one of its books in order to get under the four-pound rate and save some postage. The company made the change and did indeed save some postage: a half a million dollars the first year and each year since. Explains Marty: "I had been working in mail-order for over 20 years and never realized there was a four-pound shipping rate. But the person who was doing the job knew it, as most employees know how best their jobs can be improved."

The first year of the program, suggestions were limited to one's own job. Then as employees got the hang of the program, suggestions were encouraged for any aspect of the operation. The company now even has group meetings just to share and discuss ideas related to specific problems and issues facing the organization.

And the benefits of the suggestions are not limited to only saving money. Says Antoinette Baugh, director of personnel, "People love working here because they know they can be a part of a system where they can make a contribution." Adds Lisa Castonguay, renewals and billing manager: "My first couple of weeks I was kind of taken aback because everyone was smiling and everyone was open." She recalls her first day of work in which she was pulled into a group meeting and within 30 minutes of walking in the front door was asked, "What do you think we should do about this problem?"

Lisa almost fell on the floor. Why? Because she had just come from a company where she had worked for eight years and no one had every asked her opinion about anything. Once she got over the initial shock, it felt pretty good to have her opinions and ideas sought after and valued by those with whom she worked. As a result, it was easy for her to want to think of additional ways to help the company.

The impact is both positive and contagious. "People became agents of their own change," says Marty. "There's so much inside of all of us and we don't even know it's there until someone asks about it. And in the process it just builds and builds."