The Common Role of Leadership and Management
Albert Einstein stated that everything must be made in a very simple way but it should not be simpler. However, it all depends on the thinking capacity of an individual that think that the leaders and made to lead and followers are made to follow and that came into the mind because of the relationship between the leadership, management and followers. Moreover, leadership and management are born having the same common role because they have the same common direction in their life i.e. leadership and the controlling resources to achieve that particular direction i.e. management. Thus, they can be differentiated by examining and visualizing the different traits and characteristics followed by each of them and how they differ. There also exists some common qualities in both of them (Myers, 2018).
Leaders are the people who leads or commands and directs a group of people especially works as a head in an organization. They are the one who inspires others and motivate them to achieve a desired goals or objectives. They influence others and make something extraordinary happen.
Managers are those who are responsible for controlling and assigning duties and responsibilities to the other staffs in an organization. They control all the professional and business activities of a performer and also directs them and take corrective action where necessary.
There are many leaders and managers working in an organization. Some people are predisposed from their childhood from the very early stage and they can either stand as a leader or they can stand as a manager. But this do not conclude that an individual cannot acquire or gain the major capabilities to be either manager or the leader only but that sometimes comes naturally to be the other. This is just a way how a person would be attracted in a very natural way either by being a leader or being a manager. There are many qualities and traits that make managers and leaders predisposed to be one or the other (Naik, 2016).
- Managers work as being the detail oriented while leaders work as being a big picture in an organization.
- Managers do the tactical planning of the activities while leaders do the strategy planning in an organization.
- Mangers are focused on the efficient work while leaders are focused on doing the work more effectively.
- Managers work on the goals, projects and tasks to be accomplished while leaders work on the mission and vision of the organization.
- Managers are responsible to follow the vision and leaders are responsible to forge the vision.
- Managers involve themselves in the linear thinking while leaders are highly involved in the lateral thinking.
- Managers’ aims at following the rule that task is important than the people rather than leaders think that people are far more important than the task.
- Managers work with the tunnel vision while leaders work with a panoramic vision.
There are many things that are common in leaders and managers. However, they also differ with each other as shown below.
- People
Leaders and managers both work with the people in the organization. But the people they work with differ from each other. For a leader, people are the main reason or the cause with the help of them projects get completed or a vision is acheived. Likewise, in case of a manager, people are a way to achieve and gain a specific or a particular achievement or accomplishing a task or completing an important project.
- Reality
Traits and Characteristics of Leaders and Managers
All the managers and leaders must understand that a Reality is totally not accepted to a particular group of people. However, a leader is the one who help those people who believe that vision must be achieved at any cost and provide possible solution to achieve it. On the contrast, a manager’s motive is to encourage people in an organization on a gradual path to a vision set.
- Vision
It is very important for both the leaders as well as managers to form a vision and do the things how they wanted to be. Leaders are the one who help people forge a vision which is shared and that they think and communicate it back to the people. Managers are the one who follow the vision by dividing it into incremental goals, small tasks and projects and also aims at providing required resources to achieve the direction of the vision.
- Gap or Cognitive Dissonance
Cognitive dissonance is nothing but wide gap or difference between reality and vision that gives rise to an endeavor. Here, leaders are the one who use cognitive dissonance who will help an individual to know out the path directly from the reality to the vision that they have trust on. While managers are the one who uses cognitive dissonance just to guide people in order to take specific action plans or steps on a particular path.
- Path
Everyone needs to choose a specific path to go form their reality to the vision and same happens in an organization i.e. both the leaders and the managers understands that the employees must follow a common path. When the path is chosen by the subordinates, leaders are responsible for making some people remain on the right path to the right vision. While, managers are the people who makes sure that the progress of each path is either pursued efficiently or not with the optimal expenditure of resources (Kouzes, 2011).
It happens in general that the people share a mission that creates and introduce the negligence of reality and helps to target the vision. Leaders and managers make the proper use of the higher purpose in general. They work with the purpose to achieve the desired goals and objectives. Leaders are the one who brings out best in the people and motivate them to achieve the vision of the organization whereas managers are the one who get involved into people’s purpose and convert them into selfless sense of perseverance and endurance. They also aims at transforming the employees by building the sense of persistence in them that will bring the best out of them.
Differences in Working with People
P2 Examine examples of how the role of a leader and the function of a manager apply in different situational contexts in the organization.
In every organization, it is the manager who is responsible to perform the five major functions i.e. planning, organizing, leading, controlling and coordinating. They are the one who performs all the major functions. So, if a manager also works as a leader, the statement given will be accurate, but not all the managers are the leaders unless they perform same functions which are performed by leader like motivating, influencing and inspiring, encouraging and many more. Moreover, a leader can be any person who motivates other people and the title may not be match according the particular management position. On the other side, a manager can only be a person who is responsible for holding a management position (Economy and Finance, 2017).
Let us take an example of an organization where there are leaders as well as managers. An organization is responsible to complete the task which is very important to be accomplished on time. It requires other many people who will work in a group and complete the task. Now, it’s the duty of the manager to assign the task among his subordinates and get it done by them. Here, the leader will only be responsible to motivate and influence each subordinate to work hard to accomplish the task assigned. He will ensure that all the subordinate is giving their best or not and if not, he will influence them to get the desired results. Moreover, manager will only make sure that he gets the desired results i.e. the task must be completed anyhow. He will be least bothered about the process involved in completing the task rather than expecting the results to be best (Surbhi, 2014).
P3 Apply different theories and models of approach, including situational leadership, systems leadership and contingency.
This model is one of the most recognized and effective leadership model which also work as an influence tool. It was developed by Dr. Paul Hersey in 1960. It is model which enables leaders of all kinds to influence others in am more effective way. This model is highly based on the relationship between leaders and followers and works as a framework to examine each situation.
This theory was proposed by Fred Edward Fielder in 1964. This theory states that there are no other ways that suits best to organize a corporation or an organization in order to make decision in a company, the optimal course of actions is totally dependent on the external and internal factors and situations as well. According to this theory, there are huge number of variables on which the success of a company depends on like style of a leadership, qualities of the followers and different aspects of the situations.
Leadership’s Cognitive Dissonance versus Managerial Guidance
There are basically two outlines of a leadership style and they are task motivated and relationship motivated. Task motivated is related to the accomplishment of the task and relationship motivation is related to the making a strong interpersonal relation with the subordinates and the employees (Cleverism, 2016).
System leadership model is the model that care and work for the success of the other organization as well as employees. It helps to measure the success factors in terms of employees learning and increment in the achievement that narrow the gap and work hard to raise the bar.
This model also ensures that in order to create a change in the larger systems, it must engage itself in some meaningful ways that will helps the organization to achieve the desired goals and objectives.
P4 Explain the key approaches to operations management and the role that leaders and managers play.
Operations management is way to plan, organize and develop processes and make required adjustments in order to increase the profit percentage. The compromise in the daily operations must help to achieve the desired goals of a company and objectives so that they can proceed by analyzing it deeply and measuring the current processes (Dhoul, 2014).
There are several approaches to operations management.
It is the way of looking all the similar task and the activities which is needed to sustain a good level of commitment by enhancing and implementing all the planning accordingly and also focusing on the quality aspect. The main aim of TQM is to improve the quality of the organization in terms of all the functions and departments by providing quality goods and services and meeting the customer expectations. TQM basically focuses on seven major principles i.e. customer focus, strong leadership, people improvement, continual improvement, systematic management approach, factual approach to making decisions and healthy beneficial supplier relationships (Hashmi, 2016).
It is the strategy which enables to boost the efficiency of a business by decreasing the unnecessary wastage which can be implemented by placing the goods in the correct order and getting it back when they are required in the production process which ultimately helps in reducing the inventory costs. The just in time inventory in the operation management helps an organization to minimize the space of the storage where goods are placed are stored at the time of their use and furthermore it saves the total amount of money invested. (Hunt, 2013).
The Importance of Vision in Leadership and Management
The role that leaders play in the following approach are given below.
- To makes sure that the utilization of the workplace is involved effectively or not.
- To get involved and committed in management in order to provide long term organizational support from top level managers to bottom level managers.
- To evaluate performance measurement if the several processes.
- To order for the right amount of goods to the right supplier at the right time.
Similarly, there are also many roles that are played by managers in this approach are mentioned below.
- To focus on both the external as well as internal customers that exists in an organization.
- To treat suppliers as if they are the business partners.
- To make sure that the goods are not wasted and are properly utilized.
P5 Explain the importance and value of operations management in achieving business objectives.
Operations management is very important in business operations. It aims at dealing with the designs, operations and improvements of the systems in an organization that helps to create and deliver primary products and services. There are several functions of operations management which helps in achieving business objectives are like control and distribution system, converting raw material into finished goods and services, designing process, capacity management, logistics and inventory management, and scheduling. Some of the functions are explained in brief (Sharma, 2011).
Scheduling: It is very important function of operation management because it focuses on distributing the task which is based on the abilities and skills of the employees, resources available in an organization and the assigned time allocated to complete the given task. It works as a competitive advantage for the business by achieving the desired objective with the shortest possible time.
Logistics and inventory management: The logistics management plays an important role for operating the business. It aims at transferring the finished goods in the market at the right time. Maintaining the proper supplement of the products and services in the market and evaluate the demands of the customers is one of the major function of logistics and inventory management (Bolman, 2017).
Capacity management: It helps to specify the total amount of capacity of the production process so that no excessive goods are generated and produced in any production process because it increases the unnecessary pressure in the process of the production which at the end hampers and destroys the overall quality of the products. The bad quality of product will damage the image of the company and thus the company will fail to achieve its desired goals and objectives (Thomas, 2013).
Designing process/ process design: The designing of the process is a very important functions of operation management. It aims at ensuring that the production carried out of the product meets the demands of the customers or not and the company makes the profit out if it or not order to gain the desired objectives.
Converting raw materials into finished goods: The main objective of operation management id to manufacture quality products for its potential customers. It makes sure that the excessive resources are to be minimized which results in the minimum production costs and the company will be able to save more and achieve the business objectives (Cummings, 2014).
How Leaders and Managers Apply in Different Situational Contexts
Cost and distribution systems: Controlling the process of production and assuring that the products are distributed properly. This is one of the main objective of every organization. The efficiency in the cost and control systems can be improved by creating a very strong control system that will manage all the major activities that exists within the organization.
P6 Assess the different factors within the organization’s environment that may impact upon operational management and decision-making by leaders and managers.
Every business is affected by huge number of factors. The factor may be external as well as internal. External factors exist outside the organization while internal factors exist within the organization. The external factors have an impact on the decision-making skills of the organization. It also affects operational management. The various factors are political, legal, economic, social, technological and environmental factors (Lee, 2012).
CSR: Corporate Social Responsibility aims at contributing to the sustainable development of the organization by ensuring and delivering economic and environmental benefits to all of its stake holders. The leaders and the managers in the organization play a very major role with the context of CSR. The organization is responsible to adopt and develop short term goals in order to get benefits in the long term. In order to participate in the CSR activities, a company must make and implement minor adjustments that will helps them to achieve the desired goals and targets (Li, 2013). The organization also makes sure that all the resources within it are utilized properly or not and all the production processes are carried efficiently or not. It helps to avoid the unnecessary wastage in the organization which are produced due to the excess number of products produced in the production process. Several CSR activities affects the decision making system in an organization which are no doubt ethical by nature and which will also help and gives the additional benefits to its stakeholders as well (Financial times, 2014).
Culture: The culture that exists within the organization also plays a major role in the decision making process. Every decision taken are always in the favor of the organization keeping cultural background and cultural diversities in the view. The culture of the organization must be made in such a way that it should be easily accepted by each people in the organization and they should feel happy adopting it. The strategies in the organization are implemented and carried out keeping the workplace culture in the mind. Culture is the set of ideas that must be followed in an organization to work efficiently (CITP, 2014).
Different Theories and Models of Leadership Approaches
Values: Values are the moral principles and standards that are set in the organization which defines the one’s behavior. Each product that are made in the organization are produced keeping the value of the certain product in the minds of the customers (Bratton, 2012). The products are produced right after analyzing the value of the product with the customer’s perspective. Here, in the terms of operations management, values also play a vital role because it helps to finalize the standards of the production and also aims at setting the working standards within the organization (Juneja, 2017).
Ethics: An organization must involve itself in the ethical values and make sure that all the activities in the organization are must not harm the stakeholders and the work place environment. All the activities must be carried out wisely with the view of attaining benefits to its stakeholders. The managers and leaders must update the vision and mission of the organization time to time and should make sure that the business should perform all the activities in an ethical way (Kelchner, 2017).
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