Difference between leaders and managers
Many scholars have pursued to bring out the differences between managers and leaders as well as between management and leadership roles. They argue that managers administer while leaders innovate; that managers have short-term view while leaders have long-term view; that the manager asks how while the leader asks why; that managers eye the bottom line while leaders eye the horizon; that managers accept status quo while leaders challenge it; and that a manager manages things while a leader leads people (Atwater, Brett & Charles, 2010).
It can be argued that, one thing that these views notice is that these differences are dependent. For example, a manager can administer effectively without necessarily being innovative, or that a manager can manage things but cannot lead people.
In that respect, leadership and management mean two different things. There is every reason that a manager can manage but not lead. Fairholm and Fairholm (2008) are of the view that leadership is an advanced level of management where the individual has the overall control of an enterprise.
This means that a leader has the higher responsibility of harmonizing organizational objectives with all other elements of the enterprise. A manager in a manufacturing firm can be responsible for the human resources within the department, but can lack the skills to motivate them. Therefore, for any organization that aims to succeed in all circumstances, leadership development is paramount.
How to Develop Leadership
Leadership occurs naturally in some individuals. Others however need to acquire the skills by learning. Either way, the importance of these skills cannot be emphasized enough. Person and professional advancement in life require leadership skills. Promotions at work and other areas require people with perfected leadership skills.
There needs to be confidence that the individual will make tough and complicated decisions when given the higher office. Growth is another reason why people should study leadership skills (Atwater, Brett & Charles, 2010).There is always room for improvement; therefore, leaders undertake regular workshops and courses to sharpen their skills.
Learning leadership addresses both intelligence and emotions of a leader. Emotions sometimes cloud the ability of a leader despite the leader being intelligent, the vice versa is also possible. Through this learning, leaders learn to accept other people’s opinions and understand them and act accordingly.
The leader also learns to deal with self awareness, leading by example empathy and other social skills. Leadership is associated with numerous traits. The basis of most traits is psychological analysis. However some traits could be mandatory and necessary for all leaders.
Major leadership skills
Decisiveness is a common trait among leaders. This is because an organization needs stability as opposed to decisions that change every minute. Social boldness follows, the reason being that a leader needs to be confident. A leader is required to address his staff and other counterparts involved in his business. A shy leader therefore could face difficulties addressing people everyday and every time.
Apart from social boldness, a leader requires self confidence. This means he should believe in himself and his abilities. To achieve these, a leader needs to be emotionally stable and aware of his surrounding. Understanding his environment provides an edge for him to be in control of himself, hence be self confident.
In regards to Casida and Pinto-Zipp (2008), maturity is another common trait of developing leadership among leaders. This implies the understanding that empowered employees achieve tremendous goals. Hence they assign and delegate work and refrain from constantly interrupting them.
Leaders also appear to be team oriented. They allow the rest of the group to contribute their ideas and opinions on matters. They avoid authoritarian styles and embrace participative style. Enthusiasm is natural in them and they motivate their team at any chance they get.
Courage and Confidence
In any given place or place presents unique challenges which require confidence in any CEO in terms of leadership. Confidence helps a person not to give up or shrink in the face of difficulties. Challenges can be overcome easily if the CEO is confident. He can also be in a position to instill confidence in the team especially when things are not working. The CEO must show the way and confidence will help him to convince the team to follow his leadership in times of disaster.
Together with confidence the CEO also needs courage. The job of the CEO is one of the toughest. Starting the company may have been tough but the tougher part is to maintain its growth and existence. The CEO should be able to decide what he stands for. This will help him to do the right things all the time.
It needs a lot of courage to lay off a salesperson that has brought huge sales to the company when he causes an accident while driving the company car because of drunk driving. Times arise when the CEO must engage in decisive decision making due to potential consequences or the challenges at hand. With courage and confidence through, the CEO must observe moral judgment in order to succeed in his career.
Courage helps the CEO to stand in the times of scandals and shame. Courage is also important if he has to try new ideas. Change can attract opposition from within and from without. Courage is therefore needed to maintain the focus of the CEO and the company as a whole (Maxwell, 2005). However, the skills become evident when leadership development occurs within the work context rather than outside.
Developing leaders in the context of work
Initiatives relating to leadership development generally provide real world application of leadership skills and performance support employing various methods such as training, coaching, mentoring, job enlargement and enrichment, development assignments and action learning. When instructions are combined with a real business setting, it assists people to obtain vital skills and allow firms to handle relevant, vital, real-time problems.
Ultimately, the goal of developing leaders is more involved with action not knowledge. Hence, development can be seen as a way of providing people learning opportunities from their work rather that moving them away from work to learn. Integrating those experiences with other developmental techniques is vital. Modern leadership development now happens in a situation of continuing work initiatives that are attached to the strategic business essentials.
In a review of leadership development as a business concept, McCauley and Van Velsor (2004) realized that the approach of many businesses is based on events rather than methodical. One way of making leadership development more methodical is to ensure that it includes more than just training
An assortment of developmental experiences should be tailored and executed that are purposely integrated with one another. The efforts and strategies of leadership development should be continuous, not a sole event. The notion of leadership initiatives that connect a number of developmental activities including work itself with other human resource system and corporate strategy is the best and modern practice (Alldredge, et al., 2003).
The role of technology
The current business environment has been characterized by the revolution of technology which has changed organizational life completely. In fact, it has transformed the ways knowledge and information are transferred, and the way of communicating and sharing among people. This has significant implications for what successful leadership entails as well as the manner in which technology can be applied to enhance leadership development.
In this respect, the leadership skill of innovation becomes important. Leaders are generally required to be technologically savvy. Comfort and facility with technology and in particular information technology is required.
Considering the speed of change and response time required from the leaders, confidence in technology has quickly become a crucial piece of leadership effectiveness. It can be argued that effective use of technology has become a conduit for people at lower levels to communicate with leaders. Therefore, as much as leadership development will be effective, so will be the need for leaders to employ innovative skills that increase their technological savvy.
Conclusion
As leadership is different from management, its development is paramount for the success of an organization. Competency skills to attain good leadership skills are simple but maybe challenging to practice. Creative thinking is a competency skill that is quite handy. It helps one come up with new fascinating ideas for the projects. Great solutions for any handicap experienced can also be found by creative thinking.
Popularity as a person of integrity counts as a competency skill. Every one loves an honest person, therefore, as a leader integrity takes one places. Possession of a sense of humor is also a competency skill. If an individual makes presentations interesting by their sense of humor, they are at an advantage compared to another with boring presentations.
In conclusion leadership skills are essential to everyone both socially and professionally. However, effective leadership development should occur at the workplace rather than away from the workplace. In that environment, leaders should enhance their technological savvy in order to respond to the organizational changes experienced.
List
Alldredge, M, Johnson, C, Stoltzfus, J & Vicere, A 2003, ‘Leadership development at 3M: new processes, new techniques, new growth.’ Human Resource Planning, vol.26, no.3, pp.45-55.
Atwater, L E, Brett, J F& Charles, A C 2010, Multisource Feedback: Lessons learned and implications for practice; in Mello, J A Strategic Human Resource management, South-Western Cengage Learning, Florence, pp. 456-471.
Casida, J & Pinto-Zipp, G 2008, ‘Leadership-organizational culture relationship in nursing units of acute care hospitals.’ Nursing Economics, vol.26, no.1, pp.7-15.
Fairholm, M & Fairholm, G 2008, Understanding Leadership Perspectives: Theoretical and Practical Approaches, Springer, New York.
Maxwell, J 2005, Developing the Leaders around You, Nashville, Amazon Publishers. New York City.
McCauley, C D & Van Velsor, E 2004, The Center for Creative Leadership Handbook of Leadership Development, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.