Leadership is to motivate, influence, and enable others to achieve organisational success. On the other hand, management is about controlling a set or a group of people to achieve a goal.
Both leading and managing are required to overcome the crisis, meet goals, and sustain business growth. Both qualities have their own advantages and is required depending on the situation.
If you are an authority figure, you should embody both management skills and leadership skills and know the right time to implement each.
What important is to know when to lead and when to manage.
Our article will discuss the difference between management and leadership to understand the appropriate situation to use them in.
What Is Leadership
Leadership is an art of motivating and helping a group of people to achieve a common goal. In a business setting, it means directing the colleagues and workers with a strategy to meet the needs of the company. A few common quality of a leader includes the ability to inspire, encourage and motivate others to see their vision through and pursue the goals. Leadership focuses more on increasing the result by maintaining and building talented teams. It communicates a larger picture and inspires people to realise the picture. A leader approaches to develop trust and support in individual employees because he/she needs to tell them exactly what to do.
What Is Managing
Management is about dealing or controlling things, situation or people. It includes the act of coordinating, planning and administration to ensure the achievement of the desired result. It involves setting the task, maintaining the working process, locating the resources, and supervising the work. Managing a team within the workplace involves the constant reassessing the results to measure productivity and improve the outcome.
Difference Between Leadership And Managing
Although both management and leadership is important, the two qualities are very different. To know when to use them, you require to acknowledge the difference between both. Some of the significant differences between managing and leading are as follows:
- Often there is a mission accomplished on which leadership is based. On the other hand, managing is mostly based on completing a specific task.
- Management is more about controlling people and the outcome, but leadership is about inspiring people to have an insight outside their zone.
- There are certain rules to follow closely in managing, whereas leadership in entrails innovation and creativity.
- The focus of management is in optimising execution, but leadership focuses on optimising the whole team.
- Leadership is qualitative. Management is quantitative.
- In short, a leader inspires and motivates, but a manager directs, and the result of managing is easily measured, but the outcome of leadership is usually intangible.
Let us take an example to understand managing and leading properly. If there is an employee with the target to sell a product the leader will tell the benefit of selling the product and how useful the product is so that the employee will find a way to reach the best result. But the manager helps the employee with the tools to generate leads and instructs the employee about how many emails have to be sent or calls need to be done in a day.
Considering different focuses metrics for assessing the desired outcome in management are:
- Quality of the service
- Meeting the deadlines
- Budget efficiency
- Quantity and quality of the products
In addition, good leadership contributes to results but has its own metrics, such as:
- Engagement score
- Absenteeism
- The morale
- Team sense
- Resignation rate of high performers
What Is Better: Management or Leadership
It depends on the individual situation whether to choose between management and leadership. Some circumstances require the leader others require a manager. Besides some circumstances, require both management and leadership. As discussed above, leaders inspire and empower their team to reach the goal, but a manager must direct the staff.
If you are in an authoritative position, you can present a perfect trait of the leader and a manager. What important is to assess the problem and decide when to use which strategy.
A successful leader influences the team’s behaviour and inspires them to give the best to reach a common goal and make the right decision. If you can lead your team properly, it becomes easy to manage the team as well. True leadership positively influences the team members and optimises the process effectively through management. When your team is highly engaged and motivated, it becomes easy to implement the policy changes efficiently. Your team is invested in the company’s success, and this improves the quality of the outcome.
Once you discover your team’s response to management and leadership in different situations, you must pay attention to their key performance and behaviour. This will help you to acknowledge whether your methods are hurting your team or helping them with their ability. Once you can measure the effectiveness of management and leadership, you will be easily able to alter your strategies and behaviour to the betterment of the team and their result.
Know When To Manage And When To Lead
Once you learn when to lead or manage, you create a cohesive team functioning or crisis positive conditions.
If you want your team to excel in their careers and perform better manage when required and lead when appropriate.
Below are the few examples that will help you understand whether the situation requires a manager or leader.
When To Manage
- During the emergency or crisis
- Training new members
- Completing on deadlines
- Issues that involve things or processes.
- Delegating the important tasks
- Circumstances that need a specific result.
You need to manage when your employee is inexperienced, or the team need extra assistance. You should tell your employees what to do exactly to be successful and complete the assigned task. Give them a clear description of their goals and help them to understand what is expected.
Examples of Management within the workplace
- Improves productivity
- Improves efficiency
- Establishes processes and streamlines systems
- Create budget
- Sets timelines
- Organized
- Solves problem
- Focuses on strategic planning
- Maintain quality
- Demands action
- Creates order
- Establishes rules
- Corrects behaviour
- Minimizes the risks
When To Lead
Lead your team in the following condition:
- The members of your team are confident about their abilities and efficiently perform tasks.
- Introducing a new approach within the workplace
- Team meetings
- During creative discussion
- When you trust that your team can do the task well without your micromanagement.
If your team members are already producing a good outcome and prove their work abilities, better lead them. Lead when you trust the skill of your employees, but they require you to define the goal.
Examples of leadership skills
- Visionary
- Creates a mission statement
- Defines the team purpose
- Considers the strengths of every team employ
- Thinks strategically
- Inspires behaviour
- Satisfies the needs of employees
- Reaches long-term goals
- Gives feedback
- Encourages commitment
- Motivates
- Creates change
- Takes calculated risks
To become a good manager or a leader, you need to identify the areas that are your strength and where you need development. If you have more leadership qualities work on to improve your management tendencies. If you are in an authoritative position within the workplace, you need both the leadership and management skills to maintain a productive and happy team.
We hope our article will help you approach each situation and analyse whether the team needs to be lead or managed or a combination of both. Once you become more accustomed to your team’s needs, it will become easy to identify the situation and work accordingly. A simple rule is that seasoned employees can do even better with minimal direction, as they are highly qualified. In contrast, new employees need more management until they are skilled and confident.