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The difference between leadership and management is mainLY influenced by one’s role at work. Leadership is the art of influencing people’s thinking and behavior in order to direct them towards realizing a vision (Jaser, 2021). In contrast, management is a role which focuses on ensuring that the organization runs smoothly by running it efficiently and effectively (Jaser, 2021). Although there are many practices that both leaders and managers may apply in order to achieve their organizational goals, they tend to differ in approach as well as responsibilities. In regards to achieving the organizational goals, both leader and manager have the primary focus of fulfilling the missions such that their required tasks are accomplished. However, their tasks are not equal in scope, and there is a distinction between managerial and leadership roles. One essential difference between leadership and management is that a leader must garner the respect, commitment and support of subordinates while the manager can exert power without needing to inspire his or her followers.
Secondly leadership deals with people whereas management the work process; thus, not focused on improving the wellbeing of the subordinates (Jaser, 2021). The leader is in charge of motivational skills which are essential for people who are not leaders to attain the motivation needed to do a good job. Thus, the leader comes up with an effective way of motivating his or her group. On the other hand, the manager is responsible for holding down costs and productivity by implementing new methods in order to increase efficiency while at the same time reducing cost (Jaser, 2021). The manager sets goals and measures his or her progress in order to direct the employees accordingly so that they can reach the goals set by their superior.
Another significant difference between management and leadership is the type of attention these roles require from their respective employees. The leader demands commitment from his or her followers whereas the manager requires them to be efficient and productive (Sobocka-Szczapa, 2019). However, both leaders and managers require people to interact with their subordinates in order to implement ideas in a productive manner. Leadership focuses on helping people achieve their mission, and management focuses on organizing people to help them accomplish the organization’s goals. The leader may encourage innovation in order to meet a vision while a manager may ensure that the organization runs smoothly by ensuring that tasks are completed efficiently. In addition, leadership is more complex due to an emphasis on persuasion than management which are more focused on communication. The leader must persuade subordinates to reach goals, while the manager makes sure that tasks are accomplished by communicating with others.
The main similarity between leadership and management is that both the leader and the manager are expected to implement change and improvement within the organization (Sobocka-Szczapa, 2019). Thus, they both focus to some degree on change management. Another similarity is that they can both unlock the potential of their subordinates through the promotion of their personal development (Sobocka-Szczapa, 2019). Also, they both have to communicate their vision and style to their subordinates in order to be able to get them to contribute actively towards achieving the goals of the organization.
References
Jaser, Z. (2021). The connecting leader. Aligning leadership theories to managers’ issues. Leadership, 17(3), 376-382. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1742715020981188Sobocka-Szczapa, H. (2019, May). Competence of a leader-a manager in an organization. In 3rd International Conference on Social, Economic, and Academic Leadership (ICSEAL 2019) (pp. 74-80). Atlantis Press. https://www.atlantis-press.com/article/125909018.pdf
