Differences Between Leadership and Management

Beckhard elaborates about what leadership is like, drawing the line between this and that of management. Leadership has to do with change, enthusiasm and encouragement for the tasks, and influence. These three vital traits, each one linked with a specific function for leaders include:

1) The imagination to innovate:  To promote innovation, successful leaders assist in cultivating novel view, the ideas, paradigm, and applications of expertise that makes an organization distinct. 2) The professionalism to perform: Leaders offer personal and organizational capability, assisted by personnel preparation and education, to implement impeccably and dispense worth to ever more difficult and exacting customers. 3) The openness to work in partnership: Leaders create associations and linkages with partners who can enlarge the organization's contact, improve its contributions, or strengthen its systems. Since an organization is composed of people, this leader knows a lot about human nature so he can appropriately anticipate and adjust to various personalities (Beckhard, R. 1969).

Mulhauser, Greg. Management Skills and Leadership Skills. Accessed February 27,2008. <http://coaching.mulhauser.net/executive/manage-vs-lead.html#evidence>

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Mulhauser argues that there is no delineation line between management and leadership and the skills pertinent to the issue. Anchored on the theoretical perspective of Carl Rogers especially on the latter’s concepts like Acceptance, Authenticity and Empathic Listening, the author explores the development of these characteristics well into the individual manager or leader’s style which springs essentially from the person’s character.

The author believes that many of the theories set forth on any of these two issues are defective simply because the fact remains that there is simply no distinction as to when leadership starts and ends and where management plays its role in the picture. The author puts forth practical situations and strategies to apply the theory or concept as posited by Carl Rogers. This is an important resource because few theorists effectively can succinctly communicate what leadership and management concepts are and how they are better applied in specific settings.

Sullivan, Eleanor and Phillip J. Decker. 2005. Effective Leadership and Nursing Management in Nursing, with Student Video (4th Edition).
Authors Sullivan and Decker, wrote a very effective communication piece in the 2005 book Effective Leadership and Nursing Management in Nursing.  Although there is no argument whether leadership is vastly different from management, it carries with it the idea that the practical application of the skills comes in two important aspects and that they are indispensable as well as distinct and inseparable.

The authors identified that organizations are designed in their specific arrangements as they function and these are pertinent in how the people working in their specific areas are handled and led. The book is a great resource when specific situations (i.e., staffing and recruiting, coaching and disciplining as well as issues as handling conflict and the workplace stress) that are common in the field of nursing and health care especially where the unique challenges are being faced by both administration and management and frontline staff in this particular field.

Jaques, E. (2002). Social Power and the CEO: Leadership and Trust in a sustainable free enterprise system. Westport, Connecticut: Quorum Books in McMorland, Judith. 2005. “Are you big enough for your jobs? Is your job big enough for you? Exploring levels of work organizations. University of Auckland Business Review. Vol. 7, No.2.

According to Dr. Jacques, there is actually no difference between these two terminologies (leadership and management) in the prime values that Dr. Elliot Jacques placed on every part of the organization and as he postulated in his stratified systems theory. When he called for the individual responsibility, he meant that whether the person in the spotlight may be the rank and file individual or he happens to be the plant manager, the type of leadership that is seen is expressive of this core value.

Management then implies the adoption of accountability and this summarily implies leadership knowing as mentioned in the preceding pages on influence and exercise of power, when a person exercises accountability, he actually exerts leadership; leading by example and it is fundamentally ethical and transferable. Management and leadership are seen then, as interchangeable essentials, and according to Dr. Jacques, the existence and continuity as well as the perpetuation of a successful team depend much on the kind of leadership exemplified in the theory he posited.

Bruffee, Kenneth A. Collaborative Learning: Higher Education, Interdependence,            and the Authority of Knowledge. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1993.

The author explains in précis the need for a more efficient, economical and equitable management of the people in the industry or organization has never been as pronounced as it is today. This need has never been brought about by factors which inevitably affect not only the established structures and ways of doing things within the personnel area but also by the more meaningful and substantial task of managing the organization’s most important asset – the human capital. Among these factors are: stiffer competition in business; rapid changes in technological, competitive and economic environments; the explosion of technical and managerial knowledge; spiraling wage and benefits cost and so many others. These factors have no doubt been responsible for the emergence of the personnel function as a vital area in the implementation of corporate strategy.

Demick, J. and Miller, P., Development in the Workplace, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates,           Publishers, New Jersey, 1993.

Demick and Miller places in context first what an organization is like and settles how it can affect behavior in general and when that is established, proceeded to explain leadership and management in this context. In organizational behavior which is basic to the management of human resource, it points to the inquiry and application of learning about how people, individuals, and groups perform, operate, and work in organizations. It accomplishes this by means of adopting a system approach. Explicitly, it infers people-organization affairs in terms of the entire person, group totality, complete organization, and total social structure. Its intention is to put up enhance relations by attaining human goals, organizational purposes, and social goals. In such a milieu, the goals to effect change are influenced by several significant factors which are crucial to the overall results. Hence, there are expected leadership behaviors that maintain momentum during the change process.

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