Leadership Vs Management

I am very much interested in leadership because it is very important for me as an individual, for everyone in the society to understand the leaders in their society and for the leaders to know which type of leaders they are. The community with good leaders will successfully survive in this highly competitive world. I intend to post some of my understanding on leadership on my blog. Discussions, sharing and comments are much appreciated.

“The difference between leadership and management” is a good point to ponder. Leadership theories explain “Leadership Vs Management” in different wordings. Here are a few lines I found on the internet:

Leadership is about doing the right things, Management is about doing things right.
Leadership is about having the map and going the right direction (goals). Management is about going there efficiently.
Leadership is about effectiveness. Management is about efficiency.
Leadership comes before Management.

Another explanation from the module PP5506 of MPA is also interesting. Leadership and management are on each end of a spectrum – the spectrum with leadership on the left extreme and management on the right extreme.
Establishing goals -> Formulating strategies -> getting commitment -> Implementation
are placed on the spectrum. A role at work is a combination of both leadership and management. The scope of a leadership role covers more on establishing goals and formulating strategies while that of a manager covers more of implementation. I personally think that getting commitment could be a shared task. Thus, there is no single position with leadership or management responsibilities alone.

Whether we fit in a leadership role or a management role depends on individual’s personality. Personality refers to psychological and behavioral characteristics in individual and it makes me different from everyone else. Personality tests such as DISC and MBTI set questionnaires to find out the personality types/profiles.

In many corporations, they do believe in leadership. At my work place, all employees are defined as individual leaders. Probably this concept is useful for our community too. If everybody lives with vision, plan for future, keep on learning and performs one’s best, we would be able to build a better community.