Mngt 5000: Management Vs Leadership

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- Challenging the process

- Inspire a shared vision

- Enable other to act

- Model the way

- Encourage the heart

There are leaders in all levels of an organization that can exude these behaviors. Leaders are people who have a mental image or vision of where the organization needs to be and the actions that will take the organization there. It takes constant questioning and reasoning for a person to be a good leader. The idea is to challenge the process making it better by leveraging power, personality traits, skills, and behaviors.

Power is the ability to influence people which is essential to being an effective leader. A person can have power in different forms including Legitimate, reward, coercive, referent, and expert power (Brasfield, 2012, p. 260). Legitimate power is simply the authority over a person such as a supervisor to an employee. Reward power is when a leader leverages a reward for an employee for getting attaining a goal or company objective. For example, a cash incentive for selling a certain number of products. Coercive power is the power of punishment for not hitting the goal or not doing the correct action that aligns with the company goal or vision. Referent power is all about personal characteristics that appeal to others. This is not a power that is given by the position or role a person fulfills. However, this is an important application of leadership because it causes people to naturally follow someone. Lastly, expert power is knowledge based power. A person who is confident in their trait and can be looked to or believed in for answers attains this type of power.

Applying these different types of powers at different levels encourages leadership and defines what type of leader they are. Considering the trait approach which is focusing on personal characteristics that make up a great leader, one will utilize more referent and expert power than others. Having personality traits of drive, motivation, integrity, and self-confidence allows an average manager to gain referent and expert power. This power can be leveraged at the right time to influence other to attain the goals at hand.

A behavioral approach to true leadership focuses on what actions a person does to be a leader. There are many different positions a manager can take to exhibit leadership. If a good manager shows ideal behaviors when using legitimate, reward, and coercive powers to motivate people to achieve goals, then the manager will be looked at as a leader. If a manager utilizes these powers but it’s in the wrong scenario, then they are nothing more than a manager making management decisions. Leadership within behaviors can take form by being autocratic or democratic when making decisions, or a leader may focus on performance rather than maintenance or both. Selecting what powers to use and the different behaviors to manage by reflects on what type of leader a person is or how successful they are in leadership (Dess 2005, pg. 191).

Challenging the process and inspiring a shared vision relies on powers formed by personality traits; enabling others and modeling the way relies on powers formed by behaviors, but it’s all dependent on how much control and influence one has over the situation i.e. environment. In other words, a person whether it’s a manager, supervisor, or front-line employee can show key characteristics of leadership, but it depends how they’re executed in the given scenario. This is what makes a truly, great leader.

Overall, management focuses on resources and people within an organization and utilizes these to accomplish organizational goals. There are systematic functions and processes used to accomplish these goals. While leading is part of management, true leadership requires more focus on people and requires personality traits, behaviors, skills, and leverage of power. Management is key to achieving organizational goals and vision while leadership possessed by anyone inspires and motivates people making them perform at their best. These two combined and applied within an organization can assure operational success and create a competitive advantage by forming organization synergy achieving goals never imagined through just management.

Work Cited

Dess, Gregory G., G.T. Lumpkin and Marilyn L. Taylor. Strategic Management. 2 ed. New York: McGraw-Hill Irwin, 2005).

Brasfield, J. (2012). Management 5000. McGraw-Hill.

Murray, A. (2009, April 7). What is the Difference Between Management and Leadership? Retrieved May 14, 2015, from http://guides.wsj.com/management/developing-a-leadership-style/what-is-the-difference-between-management-and-leadership/tab/print/