Líderes y administradores

Introduction

The purpose of this essay is to discuss whether there is a clear distinction between leadership and management, and if leaders and managers are different in their nature and work.

This essay supports the point of view expressed by numerous scholars that there is indeed a very clear difference between leadership and management. This difference makes the work of leaders differentto that of managers, even though there are some similar functions that must be performed by all of them. Furthermore, this essay affirms that in order to be successful implementing the vision, every leader must possess good managerial abilities. On the other hand, all managers should have well developed leading skills to see their task of achieving organisational goals set by the leadership mucheasier.

To support these arguments, this essay firstly proceeds to clearly define the terms of leadership and management using various sources, including textbooks and academic articles written by widely known scholars. Once the two processes are unambiguously defined in order to avoid any confusion and misunderstanding, the essay discusses the principal differences between leadership andmanagement. In this compassion, and in order to facilitate an objective judgement, several aspects of management and leadership are discussed in detail, including vision establishment, execution and outcome; human development and networking; authority and influence; personal characteristics, traits and attitudes of leaders and managers, and the ways to obtain a role in the organisational hierarchy.Later the essay discusses in detail whether leaders should have in their arsenal a set of good managerial abilities. Giving a real-life example, this essay shows how disastrous could be for leaders the lack of those abilities. The essay also highlights the need for managers to possess good leading skills, which in fact are very common to the majority of top-line managers.

The conclusions,summarising the main point of the discussion, follow. The essay also employs the professional experience of this author to illustrate some important statements or support the arguments.

Leadership and management defined

Before proceeding to discuss whether leadership and management are similar or different in their nature and practical applications, it is very important to clearly define thesetwo terms in order to avoid any confusion and misunderstanding.

Speaking of management, most commonly it could be defined as the process of coordinating work activities so that they are ”completed efficiently and effectively with and through other people” (Robbins et al., 2006, p. 9). Hence, the main task of all managers is to make other people perform their duties according to the plan,attaining organisational goals and obtaining the most output from the least amount of inputs (Robbins et al., 2006). Managerial job involves performing four management functions, which are planning, organising, leading, and controlling functions (Kotterman, 2006; Robbins et al., 2006). The leading function refers mostly to motivate and influence the subordinates to perform their duties in the mostbeneficial for the organisation way and being literally ‘the head’ of the group (Robbins et al., 2006). Mintzberg (1973) concludes that managers in their day to day work perform ten different but highly interrelated roles. One of these management roles he identified as ‘leader’, suggesting that it would imply being responsible for the motivation of subordinates, staffing, training, and associated duties(Mintzberg, 1973; Robbins et al., 2006, p. 13). This role is very similar to the leading management function. Later this essay discusses in detail if the leading function and role have something in common with leadership.

Defining leadership is a more complicated task. Many authors differ significantly in their vision and definition of this term, showing much less unanimity than in the case...