Leadership and Management

Leaders Skills

Leaders focus on motivation, and inspiration (Kotter, 1990). Leaders aim to create passion to follow their vision, to reach long term goals, take risks to accomplish common goals, and challenges the current status quo (Bennis and Nanus, 1997) . The leader keeps an open eye on his followers benefits, so people follow the leader voluntarily, and the leader directs the follower by using a transformational style (Bass, 1990).

Leaders should have some critical qualities such as integrity; vision; toughness; decisive; trust; commitment; selflessness, creativity; risk taking; toughness; communication ability, and visibility (Capowski, 1994). Moreover, leaders should have charisma; a sense of mission; ability to influence people in a positive environment; and ability to solve problems (House, 1977).

In addition, research shows that effective leader depends upon common behaviors and characteristics like: confidence; service mentality; good coaching skills; reliability; expertise; responsibility; good listening skills; being visionary; realistic; good sense of priorities; honesty; willingness to share; strong self-esteem; technical or contextual, and recognition (Bennis and Nanus, 1997).

Management vs. Leadership

Leadership and management overlap, but they are not the same (Kotterman, 2006). Both leadership and management involve influence, working with people, and working to achieve common goals (The Guardian, 2013). However, the fields of leadership and management considered very different (Kotterman, 2006).

In 1977, Abraham Zaleznik wrote the first scholarly and landmark article about the difference between leaders and managers (Zaleznik, 1977). Zaleznik mentioned that the organization needs both effective managers an...

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...k on Becoming a Leader", (p. 9). ( Table 4).

In 2007, Warren Bennis wrote that “Managers do things right, while leaders do the right things” (p. 12). Katz asserts that leadership is a multi-directional influence relation, while management is a unidirectional authority relationship (Katz, 1955).

In summary, while management and leadership share similar roles, it is important to make a distinction between those two functions. The primary mission of both leaders and managers is to control and influence other people. The most important difference between managers and leaders is their approach to achieve the goals. Managers exercise their control through formal power, but leaders use their vision, and by inspiration, motivation to align their followers (The Guardian, 2013). Balancing the role of both management and leadership are critical to the organization’s success.