Is leadership more than management? Or is it just an aspiration?

Category: Sports Business | Specialism: Sports Coaching

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There is a debate we need to address, and that is the distinction between leadership and management.

Chris Mabey suggests that seperating the qualities of leaders and managers is traced back to Zaleznick (1977). Kotter (1990) reinforced this distinction, that:

good management brings order, consistency and quality to otherwise chaotic organisations

Contrasting this with leadership which is preparing the organisation for change and helping employees cope with the struggle of changing it.

But now

Organisations are 'de-layered' - the defined functions of "management" are less absolute and a manager's power base of influence has had to shift from positional power to personal.

The traditional theories (theory X etc) and frameworks are seen to be lacking and more emergent leadership rather than prescribed.

Management and leadership has been greatly studies form a western, male perspective - this is changing

The split may simply be part of the aspirational values attached to leadership over management. Though it appears that effective and successful leaders, according to our research demonstrate five competency areas that go beyond 'management'. They:

1. Use the exchange principle
2. Take responsibility
3. Earn the right to lead
4. Communicate a shared vision
5. Show flexibility in their leadership

Mapping the 'traditional' managerial competencies shows how 'agile' leaders go beyond the expected managerial standards:

Is there a difference bewteen leadership and management?

Is it just aspirational?

Or is there something important that is missing here?

Dr John Kenworthy

CCO GAINMORE™ Golf

GAINMORE™ Advantage

Tags: coaching, development, exchange, leadership, management, responsibility, right to lead, shared, values, vision

Posted Wed Oct 21 2009 4:34 PM by GAINMOREGolf | Permalink | Comments(1) Share this article:

Comments

Hi John. The distinction is becoming less and less valid. All managers lead and all leaders manage, to some extent. You can define them differently but both are essential at every level of management now, in most organisations at least. In my experience we are now being very careful to emphasise our leadership population, not our management population, when we talk about 'managers' down to junior levels (that's over 3500 as a population) as we need them ALL to lead the organisation towards change if we are to deliver on our vision.

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Rob Robson
Co-founder, iStadia.com