Management and Leadership

Leadership is the ability to create the circumstances that allow the potential of your co-workers to be utilized to the fullest extent possible. Management is the ability to organize things in most efficient and productive way possible.

Being a leader is in many ways  different from being a manager.

Leadership is a relationship, management is a position. The position of a manager is something you are appointed from people above you in the organisation. The relationship of a leader is something you are awarded from people at the same level as you or below you in the organisation.

It is possible for a manager to also be a leader, but a leader is not always a manager. If you are the manager of a community  or team and someone else is awarded the leadership of the group you may be in for a challenging situation .

A manager needs to practice  his or her leadership skills to be able to achieve the best results possible. This includes skills such as hearing, giving and taking feedback, communicating clearly and enriching  trust.

The need for both a manager and a leader

A leader can get by without being a good manager, as well as a manager can achieve good results  without being a good leader, but that is less likely. In any case both skill-sets are needed for productivity and prosperity.

A team without both a leader and manager is a bit like a rowing boat with only one oar. It tends to go round in a circle.

If a good leader is present, but good management is lacking, then problems  will arise because things such as budgets, work-flows and organizational charts will be sub-standard . On the other hand if the team has a good manager, but lacks good leadership, lots of energy will be lost through conflicts that are not handled properly, fear causing the true potential not to be tapped  and misunderstandings about expectations and intentions.

Leadership and management related to group development

A less well developed group of people  tends to appreciate the skill-set of a good manager, being able to clearly point out a direction, putting structures in place and creating  easy to follow work instructions. These are good skills in the first stage of group development.

As the team becomes more mature  and conflicts and confrontations start to be more common this is when a good leader needs to step on the stage in this second stage of group development. This could be the same person as the manager, but it could also be somebody else in the unit  Another name for this is the  informal leader of the group.

As the unit  matures even further to the third stage of group development there tends to be an equal need again for management and leadership.