BA 421 Week 1 Assignment Leadership and Management

Leadership and Management

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Leadership and Management

Leadership and management are two separate entities that often tend to coexist. For an organization to run effectively, then both its top leadership and the managerial team both have to be in accord. In general, terms, a leader is someone who has certain followers that go by whatever the leader puts in place. On the other hand, a manager has people that work for him to achieve their goal. A good leader sets in place ways in which his followers will all strive to achieve their own goals to their very best and by so doing achieve the goals of the organization. Managers have to have certain key attributes.

These include ability to execute their visions. This therefore means that a good manager has to lay down ways by which every single member of the team has to go by to achieve their visions. In contrary, a leader will organize his team, sit them down and work together as a team towards achieving their goal together as a unit.In addition, a manager has to ensure the entire managerial system runs smoothly. This includes laying down rules that have to be followed by the employees, ensure that processes and standards are set as per the organizational rules and procedures.

The manager then has to put systems in place to ensure that rules are followed to the latter to ensure the company achieves its goals. A leader on the other hand works by creating inspiration. They inspire their team to work hard. A good leader therefore does not impose rules; on the contrary, they create a spirit of inspiration within the team members thus creating a working spirit.Next, a good leader creates challenges among their team members. By creating challenges, members of their team then work at their own pace to ensure they effectively manage their tasks. On the other hand, a manager directs his team to what should and what should not be done. He directs all their activities and has a key influence each step of the way.

In addition, managers have to be people focused and oriented. They have to look into the employees’ interests and work to ensure that they are comfortable and their working conditions are acceptable. Recent studies have shown that when employees are comfortable within their place of work, then the total work output in the end will be higher. This is because employee satisfaction is linked to higher work output. On the contrary, leaders have to keep good communication skills with their team members to ensure that their goals are met.

Moreover, leaders are people oriented. They are more interested in how their employees will achieve their tasks and thus attain their vision.On the contrary, managers are more task oriented, and they are more focused on how the task will be completed. Furthermore, the aim of leaders in any organization is leading people whereas that of managers is managing work and ensuring that work is done to the very best.

Organizational performance is a measure of the actual output attained by a said organization against its intended outputs. This often looks at the financial performance of the organization, shareholder return and product market performance generally. Financial performance deals with the total profits, return on investments and returns on profits. The shareholder return is mainly involved with the economic value added to the organization.. Product market performance is mainly concerned with sales and market share among several others.

The five main areas crucial to organizational management therefore include the following. To begin with, financial performance. A good leader will ensure that this is achieved and maximum profits are obtain by providing a streamlined vision together with his team members and ensuring each team member plays his role in the achievement of the desired profits. A good manager, as already mention, being task oriented, will ensure that all tasks are done and that whatever needs to be done to achieve the profit is done. They will do this perhaps by setting up rules and regulations of what needs to be done to ensure that the financial profits are achieved.

The next crucial area is maintaining good customer service. In achieving this, great effort has to be made by the entire team at large. A leader will lead by creating a perfect example of how this should be done. They will treat their customers in certain ways and would want their followers to ensure they treat their customers in a similar manner. On the other hand, a manager will create a protocol on how customers should be treated and impose this on his employees, failure to which repercussions come about. This creates a strict policy that ultimately leads to good customer service, however, not self-driven.

There are certain significant similarities between leaders and managers. Primarily,they are both involved in a decision making process,although using different mechanisms. Next, both of them work with a particular group of people to ensure a set goal is achieved by the organization and finally, both are effective systems and like had earlier been discussed, one cannot properly work alone. They have to be incorporated in unison to ensure that a company achieves the best of its goals. Otherwise, if one system is left to run on its own without the involvement of the other, then the organization may strain in an effort to achieve its vision.

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