Management and Leadership

Essay by alvinchangA, May 2004

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Management and Leadership

Now more than ever, with today's challenge business world, the new workplace demands faster results from fewer people. In order to stay competitive, organizations need to be nimble rapidly translating new information into knowledge. The leadership style of supervisors directly impacts employee job satisfaction, retention, and commitment to getting the job done.

Management and leadership are two notions that may be interchangeably, but there is a huge difference between a manager and a leader. They are two different ways of organizing people; the manager uses a formal method and the leader uses passion. "Managers do things right, and leaders do the right things." (DeSpain, 2004, p.80) Managers efficiently manage processes, time line, and resources to obtain desired results; they excel at getting things done. Good leaders excel at inspiring people to do their best; a leader is more emotional than a manager. Managers do things by the book and follow company policy.

They tend to accept organizational structure and process as it exists although leaders seek the revisions of process; they follow their own intuition which may in turn be of more benefit to the company. "Leaders stand out by being different. They question assumption and are suspicious of tradition. They seek out the truth and make decisions base on fact, not prejudice. They have a preference for innovation." (Fenton, 1990, p.113)

A manager may only have obtained his position of authority through education, time, and loyalty given to the organization, not as a result of his leadership qualities. Management consists of people who may be experienced in their field and who have worked their way up to the organization. Management is a set of skills that an ordinary person can acquire and develop. A manager knows how each system in the organization works and may possess...