A511.1.5.RB

Where Leadership and Management Intersect: The ‘IT’ Factor

A leader realizes that in order to develop and lead other people he or she must first develop her/himself, it is in this respect I think leadership is a key quality in being an effective manager.  This post will look closely at the intersect of leadership and management.  Nobody has proposed that managing and leading are equivalent, but the degree of overlap is a point of sharp disagreement (Yukl, 2013).

In order to take a closer look we must first answer the following questions: What is leadership and how does it relate to management? The concept of how management and leadership intersect is continually discussed and debated.

 

 

Leadership Definition:

According to the text, (Yukl, 2013, Leadership is the process of influencing others to understand and agree about what needs to be done and how to do it, and the process of facilitating individual and collective efforts to accomplish shared objectives.

Leadership Theories & Concepts:

Most theories about effective leadership focus on behaviors used to directly influence immediate subordinates, but a leader can also influence other people inside the organization, including peers, bosses, and people at lower levels who do not report to the leader.

In the text, Yuki states that leadership has many different and varying meanings to people, “some theorists question whether it is even useful as a scientific construct (e.g., Alvesson & Sveningsson, 2003; Miner, 1975). Nevertheless, most behavioral scientists and practitioners seem to believe leadership is a real phenomenon that is important for the effectiveness of organizations. Interest in the subject continues to increase and the deluge of articles and books about leadership shows no sign of abating”(Yukl, 2013).

Split Concepts of Leadership:

A major controversy involves the issue of whether leadership should be viewed as a specialized role or as a shared influence process.  Another way to view leadership is in terms of an influence process that occurs naturally within a social system and is diffused among the members. Writers with this perspective believe it is more useful to study “leadership” as a social process or pattern of relationships rather than as a specialized role.

Kotter (1990) proposed that managing seeks to produce predictability and order, where-as leading seeks to produce organizational change. Both roles are necessary, but problems can occur if an appropriate balance is not maintained. Too much emphasis on the managing role can discourage risk taking and create a bureaucracy without a clear purpose. Too much emphasis on the leadership role can disrupt order and create change that is impractical. According to Kotter, the importance of leading and managing depends in part on the situation. As an organization becomes larger and more complex, managing becomes more important (Yukl, 2013).

Management Concepts:

The descriptive research found that managerial work is inherently hectic, varied, fragmented, reactive, disorderly, and political. Brief oral interactions predominate, and many of these involve people outside the manager’s immediate work unit and chain of command. Identifying meaningful and widely applicable categories to describe the content of managerial work has been a problem for a long time. One approach is the taxonomy of managerial roles proposed by Mintzberg.



 

TABLE 2-1   (Yukl, 2013)  Mintzberg’s Managerial Roles

 Information Processing Roles

• Disseminator
• Monitor
• Spokesperson

 Decision-Making Roles

• Entrepreneur
• Disturbance handler
• Resource allocator
• Negotiator

Interpersonal Roles

• Liaison
• Figurehead
• Leader

Another approach is represented by job description research that asks managers to rate the importance of different activities and responsibilities for their jobs (Yuki, 2013).

The ‘IT’ Factor:

Leaders and followers influence each other as they interact in non-coercive ways to decide what changes they want to make. Managers may be leaders, but only if they have this type of influence relationship.

“Failing organizations are often over managed and under led” –Warren G. Bennis

Finally, effective managers are more proactive in their behavior. Even when reacting to unforeseen events, their behavior more closely reflects their objectives and priorities. Effective leaders devote time to identifying current problems for which a solution can be found, and they prepare how to respond to unavoidable but predictable problems and disruptions. When a problem occurs, they quickly identify the cause and take decisive action to direct the work unit’s response. Effective leaders also keep people informed about progress in efforts to deal with a serious crisis (Yuki, 2013).

 

Manager/ Leaders with the ‘IT’ factor have done the following:

• Go from Planning  to Creating Vision
• Go from Organizing to Aligning
• Go from Controlling to Inspiring

 

Reference:

Yukl, G. A. (2013). Leadership in organizations (8th ed.). Boston: Pearson.