Introduction
The success of an organisation is determined by the efforts of leaders and managers to ensure employees follow policies and maximise their productivity. Managers and leaders ensure all employees work together to achieve the success.
However, not all managers are good leaders, and organisations should set clear policies on the roles of these two positions. Current paper presents the differences between effective managers and leaders and describes a real leader’s inspiration.
Definitions
An Effective Leader
An effective leader is a person who can influence others and ensure they do something that will benefit all of them. The essence of leaders is to make sure that there are the changes in the way the activities are done in organisations.
It means that effective leaders are focused on transforming the mentality of employees to see the need for changes that will improve their work. They lead people and check whether the resources are utilised for the benefit of investors, managers and their subordinates or not.
Effective leaders have followers and influence them to achieve special visions.
An effective leader may set directions and offer alternative ways of achieving the goals established by managers. Such leaders do not make decisions and impose on their followers; instead, all stakeholders participate in certain activities to be sure that their views are put into consideration.
The power of an effective leader is derived from personal charisma, and this means that leadership cannot be transferred through conventional ways like training. Effective leaders appeal to the hearts of their followers and have a passion for motivating other people to change and improve their performance.
They take risks because they want to achieve what others have never accomplished. The most successful leaders may break the rules and create conflicts in organisations in order to achieve success. However, they do not focus on the negative effects of these acts. Instead, they use such situations to improve the performance of all employees.
This means that effective leaders see the opportunities for change and growth in mistakes; therefore, they do not condemn weak employees. They take the blame and give credit where it is due as their main aim is to seek the right way of improving performance and motivating employees to get satisfaction from their work.
An Effective Manager
An effective manager is a person who uses the required portion of skills in order to stabilise organisations and check whether their subordinates are able to follow all policies or not. These managers have to set a number of short-term goals that have to be achieved with the help of their investors.
Another important thing this type of managers tries to consider is the quality of the possible use of all resources they have an access to. The point is that managers have an access to more resources in comparison to other workers of the same organisation; still, they try to use the same process of this resource management.
This is why it is very important for a really effective manager to know how to define the best resources for their activities. They make decisions and hope other employees will accept them without resistance.
Their authority is derived from formal procedures, including the powers vested in them by their organisations and the trust of other workers.
The leadership style of effective managers is transactional because this group of people seeks to accomplish certain formal objectives. High profits and a good public image are the two main aspects that motivate people to work harder.
They are afraid of risks and try to minimise them because they want to achieve the immediate results and identify those people, who cannot achieve them as failures. Effective managers do not like to take new roads, but use the old ones to create new impressions.
Effective managers make the rules and expect their subordinates following them without asking questions. They do not provide subordinates with opportunities to express what they actually think and can offer to improve their performance.
The managers under consideration define themselves as those, who are right and who do not take blames.
A Real-Life Example of Level 3 Leadership
There are many successful leaders, whose styles of leadership deserve attention. Leadership style is one of the most crucial individual methods of influence on the innovations of an organisation.
The example of Spain demonstrated during Euro 2008 proves that this country and its context have a lot to say in order to improve the understanding of proper leadership. This real-life example proves that the Spanish leadership model is not only about employees’ behaviour and attention to conscious thoughts.
It is about people, their expectations, values, assumptions, and beliefs. From the report of a project manager (Mr. Carlos) to a general manager of a hotel chain (Mr. Hale), it becomes clear that the most successful leaders have to trust their people and believe that what they plan to do should be done in the most beneficial ways.
In other words, a good leader should have a certain number of followers in order to become an effective leader.
The events during Euro 2008 made many hotel managers change their politics and rely on new ideas offered by the experts in the chosen spheres as well as ordinary manages to consider the needs of ordinary people, who are eager to become a part of the Euro world.
In his report, Mr. Carlos admitted that many workers are eager to offer their own ideas on how to improve their hotel services and attract more customers. Of course, it is easy to consider the demands and offers of different people, still, it is not an easy task to analyse each though and recognise the expectations and values of each worker.
Mr. Hale demonstrated one of the most successful methods and chose a written form of questionnaires for his workers. Mr. Carlos had to organise online questionnaires and attract as many people as possible to that event.
A good leader should never neglect the assumptions of his/her workers, and Mr. Hale proves that he deserves to be an example of “Level Three” leadership style. On the one hand, he considered visible actions and intentions (conscious thoughts) of his managers through the report of his project manager.
On the other hand, he paid enough attention to the Level Three within the frames of which the leaders get to know more about the values and beliefs that have been developed over time taking into consideration cultural norms and preferences that play an important role in a social life.
Conclusion
All leaders are good managers, but the reverse is not true because these positions have different requirements. A good leader inspires, gives hope, and shows the direction by being an example to other employees, and good managers use the policies to influence other employees like it was demonstrated by the Spanish example during Euro 2008.