Leadership Vs. Management

Leadership can be defined as “the action of leading a group of people or an organisation, or the ability to do this” (Oxford Dictionary, 2015). Although this is a simplified definition, it has been said that there is no one definition of leadership. During my time in class I studied a wide variety of substantial leadership essays, books and TED talks. Each academic piece, in their own way, highlighted a different aspect or attitude toward leadership in an organisation or environment. For the purpose of this essay I am going to review: Leadership VS Management, Transactional and Transformational leadership, Contingency Theory, Trait Theory and then I will be giving my personal experience and view of leadership in my workplace.

Leadership VS

Weathersby (1999) describes it as the allocation of scarce resources against the company's objectives in order to achieve a result. Management is mainly based on control. As I’ve said before, there is no one simple definition of leadership. There are an abundance of aspects to what makes a leader, some recurring themes are that a leader is someone who is confident, hard working, resilient and has a clear goal or vision (Marques, 2007). Zaleznik (1977) explains that a manager, with the help of specific skills, uses people and ideas to come up with business strategies in order to run a successful business. Although there are some similarities between leadership and management, they do differ on many parts. Leaders have followers and they create more leaders, managers have people that work for them. Leadership has been described as the management of meaning. Leadership works by influencing the relationship between an employer and an employee.(Smirch et al,

Fiedler (1967) suggests that there is no one ‘best’ form of leadership. His research is based on the idea that leadership styles vary by situation. He explains that leadership styles change based on different aspects of a situation. He gives three specific variables that have an effect on a situation: group atmosphere, power position and the structure of the given task. Vroom and Yetton (1973) expanded on this theory to say that some situational variables include if the leader has enough relevant information and will the subordinates accept this autocratic decision. Contingency theory relies on a near perfect match between the leader and making the situation more favourable to the group. Hill (1969) explains that the most important aspect of the study of contingent leadership is that it makes “intuitive sense”, if you carefully analyse any amount of leadership situations you will rarely find that any two are the same. It all changes based on the leader and the type of person being lead. This brings sense to the studies and highlights Fiedler’s theory that leadership is contingent on