Leadership and management abilities are not always skill sets found in the same individuals. Many people subscribe to the accepted thought that if a person is a manager, or has a mangers title, that person can also lead.
This thought process has been the Achilles heel for many organizations. Unfortunately not all mangers can lead, and in fairness, not all leaders can manage. Leadership without Management does yield movement forward however it usually is fraught with pitfalls and usually leaves an organization floundering once hitting a lower plateau
The word leadership can refer to: The ability "to get people to follow voluntarily”. One of the differentiating factors between Management and Leadership is the ability to inspire. To be a leader a person’s ability and skill set must invoke passion for a group or person to follow a direction, vision, or plan. Simply put, a leader has the responsibility of causing others to follow a path laid out or a vision that has been articulated to achieve a task.
Most business organizations encourage what they see as "leadership skills" and reward identified potential leaders with promotions. To measure leadership, we should assess the extent of influence on the followers, or the amount of leading.
Charisma and personality alone can work miracles but most leaders can only move the needle so far with this limited skill set. Leaders need to have a very high degree of self-confidence and moral conviction since usually their directions challenge the status quo and may offend those who have a stake in preserving the established order. Exceptional leaders display a high degree of faith in themselves and in the attainment of the vision they articulate. Leadership approaches do not always constitute specific styles, but combined, they exemplify the most effective style of today's leaders. Great leaders act as spokespersons for their respective organizations and represent those organizations to external constituencies.
Great leaders communicate expectations of high performance from their teams and strong confidence in their followers’ ability to meet such expectations. Great leaders selectively awaken those motives of supporters thee leader sees as of relevance to the accomplishment of the vision and mission.
To influence followers to accept and execute change, leaders engage in "alignment" and “framing” to create and sustain competitive advantage.
The difference lies in the leader realizing that the achievement of a task and it's success, only happens through the goodwill and support of others, while the manager may not.
For leadership to occur, leaders must communicate the vision to others in such a way that the followers adopt the vision as their own, and have the ability to invoke passion in that vision.
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