Management and leadership principles and practices

¶ … Leadership and Management

Differences in Management and Leadership

In the article What Leaders Really Do (Kotter, 2001) the author uses a variety of constructs, examples and frameworks to define the differences between management and leadership. Underlying all of these is the fact that management is more oriented towards ensuring the stability of an organization through a variety of control and reporting systems while leadership is more oriented towards defining a vision and mission for their business (Kotter, 2001). From this fundamental difference in the two roles, the author builds out a framework comparing each.

Analysis of Management vs. Leadership

Kotter's definition of management is aligned with the classical view of this function in an organization being comprised of planning, organizing, leading and controlling. He uses comparable terms and also expands more on the role of management in coping with complexity and anticipating needs in an organization from a staffing and resource perspective. The role of management, according to Kotter, is to also ensure the stability and longevity of an organization through the use of systems and controls that provide feedback on the alignment of an organization to its goals (Kotter, 2001). A manager is one that puts systems in place to also evaluate historical performance in light of current or existing performance relative to a goal or objective. All of these factors taken together lead to a manager being more focused on the present and immediate future, not necessarily looking past a time horizon where tactical strategies can make the most contribution to an organization (Kotter, 2001). The management role in an organization is also oriented towards problem solving under constraints including time, resources, costs and the organizational structure. The paradigm that Kotter proposed in his article gives management the ability to act on these factors and bring greater levels of performance to an organization in the short-run.

Contrasting the management role in an organization, leadership is more focused on creating a vision that can sustain and unify a business over the long-term. Leadership is also more focused on how an organization is going to deal with change from a strategic standpoint, redefining its business model if necessary in the process (Kotter, 2001). According to Kotter, leader also looks to make interconnections between different elements as well, creating new opportunities in the process (Kotter, 2001). He also describes the various leadership styles and approaches including the emergence of transformational leaders, who have the ability to defining a compelling vision and also enumerate the steps to achieve them (Cheung, Wong, 2011).