Managers and leaders zaieznik

BEST OF
1977

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The traditional viewof management, back ini977 when Abraham Zaieznik wrote this article, centered on organizational structure and processes. Manage* rial development at the time focused exclusively on building competence, control, and the appropriate balance of power. That view, Zaieznik argued, omitted the essential /eoc/ers/)/p elements of inspiration, vision, and humanpassionwhich drive corporate success. The difference between managers and leaders, he wrote, lies in the conceptions they hold, deep in their psyches, of chaos and order. Managers embrace process, seek stability and control, and instinctively try to resolve problems quickly-sometimes before they fully understand a problem's significance. Leaders, in contrast, tolerate chaos and lack of structure andare willing to delay closure in order to understand the issues more fully. In this way, Zaieznik argued, business leaders have much more in common with artists, scientists, and other creative thinkers than they do with managers. Organizations need both managers and leaders to succeed, but developing both requires a reduced focus on logic and strategic exercises in favor of an environment wherecreativity and imagination are permitted to flourish.

Managers and Leaders
Are They Different?
by Abraham Zaieznik

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Business leaders have much more in common with artists than they do with managers.

' H A T IS THE IDEAL WAYtodevelOp

leadership? Every society provides its own answer to this question, and each, in groping for answers, defines its deepest concerns about the purposes,distributions, and uses of power. Business has contributed its answer to the leadership question by evolving a new breed called the manager. Simultaneously, business has established a new power ethic that favors collective over individual leadership, the cult of the group over that of personality. While ensuring competence, control, and the balance of power among groups with the potential forrivalry, managerial leadership unfortunately does not necessarily ensure imagination, creativity, or ethical behavior in guiding the destinies of corporations.

Leadership inevitably requires using power to influence the thoughts and actions of other people. Power in the hands of an individual entails human risks: first, the risk of equating power with the ability to get immediate results; second,the risk of ignoring the many different ways people can legitimately accumulate power; and third, the risk of losing self-control in the desire for power. The need to hedge these risks accounts in part for the developyment of collective leadership and the managerial ethic. Consequently, an inherent conservatism dominates the culture of large organizations. In The Second American Revolution, John D.Rockefeller III describes the conservatism of organizations:
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"An organization is a system, with a logic of its own, and all the weight of tradition and inertia. The deck is stacked in favor of the tried and proven way of doing things and against the taking of risks and striking out in new directions."' Out of this conservatism and inertia, organizations providesuccession to power through the development of managers rather than individual leaders. Ironically, this ethic fosters a bureaucratic culture in business, supposedly the last bastion protecting us from the encroachments and controls of bureaucracy in government and education.

liant, lonely person must gain control of himself or herself as a precondition for controlling others. Such anexpectation of leadership contrasts sharply with the mundane, practical, and yet Important conception that leadership is really managing work that other people do. Three questions come to mind. Is the leadership mystique merely a holdover from our childhood-from a sense of dependency and a longing for good and

Manager Versus Leader Personality
A managerial culture emphasizes rationality and control....