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.
