Leadership vs. management: key differences and applications

Leadership and Power 12 Angry Men

It is clear that Juror 8 is the typical example of Expert Power. Expert Power is based on the idea that knowledge drives the power of the individual in an organization or a group (Merchant, Media n.a.). Expaning this idea, the Expert Power means that an individual in an organization reaches a level where he can impose his leadership and power because he is able to work with particular terms, in a particular area and to bring relevant knowledge to a certain part of the discussion and analysis.

This is the case with Juror 8. Although he appears, in the beginning of the movie, as someone who is just not able to sentence someone to death without a prior discussion (the immediate condemnation bears the death penalty), he argues very thoroughly and applied the case. He shows that the evidence seems to be circumstantial, that two witnesses seem to be less reliable than initially believed, that the murder weapon is a strange choice and that, overall, there is reasonable doubt to the defendant's guilt. Juror 8 presents the case, although in a humble manner, as a veritable detective, showing the weaknesses of the accusation.

Coercive Power is defined as using threats and punishments, among other coercive instruments to impose one's will on the others. Juror 3 is the Coercive Power. He is the last that decides to change his vote and does so only to relieve his own problems with his son. Throughout the movie, he is the one who applies pressure on the other jurors, through different means. He verbally abuses Juror 5, when the latter switches his vote, of doing so out of subjectivism. He rants on different occasions and shouts "I will kill you!" To Juror 8 at one point.

Referent Power is linked to interpersonal relationships, to the way that an individual pushes and supports his position in a group by forming relationships with other individuals. I believe that Juror 8 is again the best example for this. Initially, he is entirely isolated in his position. However, he builds specific alliances with individuals he feels are isolated too, in their lives. These are Jurors number 5 and 11. This shows a very specific and pertinent knowledge of how psychology works: people on the periphery of the society, some time or other, could relate well to other people finding themselves there at some moment.

There is no legitimate power in the 12 Angry Men. Legitimate Power derives from some sort of recognition of an official power. There is nothing of this type here, although the jury has a nominal person in charge of coordinating operations such as voting. He is not necessarily influential in the way that the voting takes place or in the subsequent alliances between the jurors.

Reward Power is usually associated with incentives, namely that power derives from the use of incentives to support a certain position. In the case of the movie, we see a similar process with the Juror 7, who has tickets to a baseball game and who, as such, is willing to vote in whatever manner is necessary to obtain his freedom and passage to the game.

The Harvard Business Review is the best place to start an analysis of the differences between management and leadership. Nayar (2013) lists three main differences between management and leadership. These are counting vs. creating value, circles of influences vs. circles of power and leading people vs. managing work.

According to HBR, managers only count value rather than focus on creating value. At the same time, they look to creating circles of power and are set on controlling a group of people so that they can impose their decisions. As the following paragraphs will show, the movie shows the differences between management and leadership on all these different levels.

I think the discussion between management and leadership can only be understood in a contrast between Juror 3 and Juror 8. Juror 3 is obviously the managerial type. Throughout the movie, he is in a position to manage the jury and obtain a final guilty verdict. From this perspective, he is not necessarily a bad manager: he communicates well with his human resource, has a fixed objective and continuously pushes that objective to the other jurors.

He is, however, an unsuccessful manager because he is obtuse and does not look to outside facts to redefine his options. He is not flexible and cannot react to the changes in the external environment. As a consequence, he cannot change his position to accommodate jurors who are still undecided and who eventually side with Juror 8 because Juror 3 cannot lead them towards his camp.

On the other hand, Juror 3 proves leadership. Initially, he opposes the verdict, but he does so by offering a vision that other jurors can adhere to: what if he is not guilty and what if all the evidence is circumstantial. He does so by carefully selected arguments and by a leadership style that seems aloof on many occasions, particularly in the beginning. He does not push his conclusions on the others, but rather asks "what if" questions that eventually make people go to his camp. He provides an idealistic vision, the fact that they could save a man's life.

Looking at the three main differences that have been discussed so far, Juror 3 acts as if he has subordinates to whom he wants to impose his point-of-view. Juror 8, on the other hand, starts out all alone, which means he needs to build his support by influencing the other jurors and he does so as an excellent leader by creating circles of influence. He creates value as a team, as soon as he starts receiving people on his side.

Juror 3 acts as a true manager by counting value rather than creating it. He starts the movie with all jurors, except Juror 8, on his side. As a consequence, he is not set on creating value, since he expects the last of the jurors to turn to his side eventually. Through his management style, he succeeds in actually losing the value of some of his jurors, who turn over to the other team, because of his disabling their strengths.

Tuckman presents the four stages of group development. The first stage is the beginning of group forming. All the initial operations take place in this phase. A leader is identified, a task is defined and an objective is agreed upon, one that the team will follow through the other development stages.

In the movie, the forming stage occurs, obviously, in the first scenes of the movie. The trial ends and the jury is isolated in order to reach a verdict. The audience identifies the group, as well as the sole individual that has a different opinion from the group. They have defined their task (reaching a decision, because their task is incomplete if they do not have a unanimous verdict), have an assumed manager (Juror 3) and an opposing individual in the group.