The one thing that business teaches us is that poor management impacts productivity in negative ways and good management will allow the business to prosper. By definition, the word management means “the process of dealing with or controlling things or people”.
Good leadership can help retain well-qualified and experienced individuals, poor leadership will alienate staff, and the business could lose one of its more valuable assets. By definition, the word Leadership means “the action of leading a group of people or an organisation, or the ability to do this”.
What are the fundamental functions of Management?
- Managers assign work tasks and follow up to ensure the person it was assigned to complete it within the agreed time and format
- Managers concentrate on long-term business goals; middle managers help organise activities across the business; team leaders and supervisors focus on groups. The structure the business implements needs to be followed and accomplished by all level of management
- The manager’s challenge is to satisfy all operational needs and be accountable for all outcomes by the team members. Furthermore, they must ensure that all tasks are complete to the standards of the business or the customer
- Managers must be vigilant with staff having the right work, life, balance and value diversity in supporting the work efforts and experiences of others.
The focus of a manager in our modern working environment is increasingly focused on coaching staff; assisting staff in building on their current skill sets and offer professional development succession plans to do this. At the same time success is accomplished when staff are supported rather than simply being directed and assigned tasks.
What are the fundamentals of Leadership?
- Creates an inspiring vision of the future, a function that requires a leader’s focus on an organisation’s strengths and the ability to guide its staff
- Motivates and inspires people to engage with company vision, when a new project starts, the business will have lots of enthusiasm for it, so it’s often easy to win support for the project at the beginning. The difficulty is in finding ways to keep your staff motivated beyond the initial enthusiasm
- Leaders deliver the vision; they also need to ensure they make the necessary changes to the plan when needed, to ensure the effectiveness of the outcome. This helps to ensure that the changes needed to deliver the vision are implemented effectively, with the support and backing of all participants
- The Coach is the one that builds a team, so as a team are more successful at achieving the goals and vision. Individual and team development are important activities carried out by forward thinking leaders and will assist a team in completing their current task and ease pressure when they are working on multiple projects.
Leadership can be hard to define and it means different things to different people. Leaders set direction and help themselves and others to move forward. To do this, they create an inspiring vision, then motivate and inspire others to reach that vision. They also manage delivery of the vision, either directly or indirectly, build and coach their teams to make them ever stronger.
Therefore, I will pose this question; can a natural born leader manage? Alternatively, can a great manager lead? In the world of business both are equally important to make a business great and greatness arrives from the Manager and the Leader working together. I guess when you have a Manager or a Leader that possess both talents what would be the outcome, I believe that business people like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates have these attributes and hence the reason for their amazing success.
“Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected” Steve Jobs – Entrepreneur and inventor
So which one are you? Moreover, which one do you want to be?
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