Leadership is a Process of Energy, Not Structures - Essay Example

? Leadership is a Process of Energy , Not Structures Leadership can be defined as organising a group of people in order to achieve certain goals that the leadership has set, it can be seen as empowering others to translate a vision in to a reality, it is based on social influence, which does not necessarily follow from power or authority (Northouse, 2004, p56). Management on the other hand, can be defined as planning, organizing and coordinating people in order to aggregate their efforts to achieve certain goals and objectives efficiently. These two terms, management and leadership, are usually confused although there exists a difference between the two, a key reason for confusion is because the both involve making decisions that affect how an entity runs its affairs. This essay will look at the differences between leadership and management in terms of how a leader achieves his purpose and the responsibility of management. The phrase “Leadership is a process of energy, not structure, in this way, leadership is different from management- managers pursue stability while leadership is all about change” shows that the interest of a manager is maintaining processes and structures ensuring stability while a leader seeks to improve by initiating and driving change in an organisation (Boje, Burnes & Hassard, 2011, p38). In the current business and organisational environment, the decision making organs of an organisation have valued the leadership style to drive change in the organisation, which will ensure that the organisation is competitively placed in the market while still insisting on managerial qualities to ensure reliability in the organisation. One of the key differentiating factors between the leaders and managers is that while the managers maintain the status quo, a leader is interested in developing the organisation to greater heights of success (Kotter, 2008, p 45). When a manager is in charge of an organisation or a department within an organisation, his main responsibility is to ensure that that department has maintained the levels of performance that it has (Mondy, Noe & Gowan, 2005, p68). For instance if a manager is in charge of the human resource department in an organisation, his main interest will be to ensure that the employees do not reduce their levels of productivity or their work ethics, he does this by following the laid down procedures processes and the norms and values that an organisation has. A leader who is in charge of the organisation or the department, his main purpose is to break the status quo in the organisation or department and ensure that it performs better than it was before he took the management position (Kouzes & Posner, 2007, p69). Take a leader for example, who takes control of the human resource department of an organisation, he will learn the operating ethics that the employees have, including the department’s culture norms and values, he will then purpose to learn the strength and weaknesses of the employees in the department. A leader will then analyse these and change the department’s culture if it was an inhibiting factor to good performance, he then will have aim at focussing on improving the performance of the employees based on their strengths and weaknesses and therefore improving the productivity of the human resource department, he is in charge of. While the main point of focus for managers is the systems and structures, a leader is more focused on the people (Wissman, Knippa & Roberts, 2008, p109). A manager’s point of focus is the structures and systems that govern an organisation, these include the set norms, values and code of conduct in the organisation, he then aims at improving these without leaving loopholes that may encourage laxity among the employees (Daudelin, 1994, p35). This in essence means that the employees follow a strict way in performance of their duty and to some extent, their flexibility is limited by the laid down procedures. A manager in a school setting for instance will insist on the students and teachers following the timetable that has been set without changing anything, this means the students and teacher should be in class at the specified time and he will be more concerned with the adherence of the rules more than any other aspect of the institution. On the contrary, a leader will be more interested in the people that are performing such duties, he allows for more flexibility depending on their needs and ways that work best for them (Chang & lee, 2007, p175). A leader in an educational institutional will be more concerned with the situations that the teachers and students perform best and therefore work towards making the working and learning environment conducive for excellence. A point to note is that the manager in this case reduces creativity among the workers, since they have to follow the laid down procedures while a leader inspires creativity among the people he is leading since he allows them to work under the environment, which they will perform best. However, some elements of control must be exercised by the leader to ensure there is optimal output from his subjects. Another distinction between a manager and a leader is that is that the while a manager relies on control to manage his subjects, a leader builds trust with his subjects in order to get things done (Darling & Nurmi, 2009, p155). A manager relies on rules and regulation to get his subjects to perform their responsibilities and in some extreme cases, he instils fear among the workers in order to have control over them, this makes performance of a person’s duty more of a procedural activity rather than something he should look forward to. In this sense, the manager is more interested in seeing the subjects adhere to the rules while recognising him as the head of the organisation or department. For instance, a manager in an academic institution will be more interested in the teachers and students obeying his orders and seeing thing from his perspective. In contrast, a leader builds trust with his employees where the work environment is built on mutual understanding and corporation for them to realise the organisations goal, a leader goes out of his way to explain the organisations set targets and objectives and their roles in achieving those targets (Harrison, 2005, p42). In addition, a leader will work with the employees by listening and reasoning with them, listening to their feedback and responding to their concerns, this builds a mutually beneficial working relationship between the leader and his team inspiring the team to work optimally in order to achieve the organisations objectives. For instance, in an educational setting, a leader of the institution will deliberate with his teachers and students on how best to improve the performance of the institution, and therefore the policies that he puts in place have put in to consideration the suggestions of the teachers and students. Managers are more concerned with the short-term goals while leaders see the big picture and in addition to working on some short-term objectives, they put in place measures to ensure long-term objectives are met. Managers work in order to meet the immediate objectives of the organisation without necessarily putting in place measures to achieve long term goals. For instance in a business enterprise, a manager will be more interested in the profit of the business than the growth in of the company or the revenue. A leader sees the big picture and is more interested in the long term goals of the organisation while still concentrating on the short term ones (Dasgupta, Sahay & Gupta, (2009, p320). A leader would put in place measures to ensure the long term objectives of the organisation are met within the stipulated time frame through breaking them into short term objectives and fixing timelines in which to achieve these short term goals. In a business enterprise, a leader would be interested in expansion and diversification of the business and at the same time the growth in production capacity, this would protect the business against the risks in the market as well as improving its market share (Caust, 2009, p56). A manager imitates the actions of his predecessor while a leader finds his own way that suits him and the organisation best. A manager usually works in order to follow in the footsteps of those that were before him, he does not initiate anything of his own or change the working environment to suit his leadership style or the current environment that the organisation is operating in. A manager running a business enterprise would aim at ensuring he would run the organisation in a similar way that it was run before he took charge of it, this would include the way the employees related to each other irrespective of whether it ensured optimal output or not. A leader is his own person and finds a way that best suits him to run the organisation; he is not necessarily concerned by how the organisation was run before. A leader will analyse the organisation and see the best way that would improve the performance, he would then use that approach to run the affairs in that organisation. An example in the business industry is where a manager find that the employees work from 8 am to 2pm, finding this ineffective, he would aim at increasing the productivity of the employees by increasing the working hours up to 5pm without minding that it may have been the tradition in that organisation to work up to 2pm. A leader is more concerned with improving the way things are done to increase efficiency rather than maintaining an organisation’s management style. While a manager is more concerned with maintaining the status quo to avoid lowering the performance of an organisation, a leader looks ahead at improving the organisation standards (Rune, Burnes & Oswick, 2011, p4). All the activities of a manager goes to ensure that the standards that he met in an organisation do not decline, he is reactive to situations that disrupt the smooth running of affairs in the organisation. For instance, a manager in a company that deals with selling newspapers will wait until the demand of the newspaper declines due to the increase of online newspaper in order for him to authorise the company to start publishing their news online. A leader is concerned with increasing the performance of an organisation, as he understands the best insurance to underperformance is improving the current performance to cushion the organisation against falling below the expected standards. His policies in the organisation is aimed at empowering the people working in the organisation to increase their productivity and at the same time improving the efficiency of the operations by adopting new and better technologies. In the newspaper industry, a leader in charge of a firm would steer the firms to start publishing their news online even before the demand for the ordinary newspapers declines, this therefore ensures that the organisation will not fall below the set standards. A leader is more proactive in his organisation of the people that work in the organisation, he acts before the need for that action arises. A manager is more receptive to threats than he is to opportunities while a leader is keen to maximise any opportunity that avails itself to maximise on the benefits the organisation gets from it. Since the intentions of a manager are to maintain the status quo in an organisation, his actions and policies in that organisation are to counter those threats and the effect they have on the organisation (Cooper, 2005, p79). This goes to ensure that the performance of the organisation does not decline. For instance, if a manager in charge of an organisation that supplies of ornaments made from gold in a country that contains other gems such as diamonds, the manager would only change the making of ornaments form gold to using another precious metal if the supply of the gold has reduced or the demand for the gold ornaments has reduced. A leader, on the other hand is a person who is more concerned with exploiting opportunities when they avail themselves in order to improve the performance of the organisation he is running, he looks for opportunities for growth of the organisation rather than waiting for a crisis to face the organisation then react. If a leader managed the company that produces ornaments, he would diversify the ornaments by making use of other gems such as the diamonds, which would have diversified their market therefore even if the demand for gold ornaments declined, or the supply of the gold reduced, the company would still be left with other types of ornaments to sell. The main motivation of managers is mainly money, ego or fame, leaders are mainly motivated by winning. Managers are more motivated to perform in their duties due to the financial rewards or fame that comes with them succeeding, this may explain why they are very risk averse since any failure or lowering of the standards would lead to them receiving less monetary rewards or their fame would decrease. This makes the managers very cautious in the policies their organisations adapt; they prefer those that do not disturb the stability of the organisation. To the opposite of managers are leaders who are interested in winning and achieving what other organisations have not achieved, these people are more motivated by the desire to outshine others in their respective fields. This desire makes them more risk tolerant since in order to be ahead of the other firms, they have to ensure that they do not remains stagnant but should keep on growing and improving their operations, money or other form of monetary motivations are not a priority among leaders. Leadership and management are however not mutually exclusive and they can operate within the same context, with the current global business environment, a leader will require some managerial traits while a manager will need some aspects of leadership in order to succeed (Avery & Bergsteiner, 2011, p79). Since a managers responsibility is to plan organise and coordinate while the main role of a leader is to inspire and motivate, merging the two would mean an organisation would have a traits of the two which would be an ingredient for success (Tjosvold & Wisse, 2009, p89). Critique of the phrase The phrase "leadership is a process of energy, not structure, in this way, leadership is different from management- managers pursue stability while leadership is all about change” is not fully agreeable, this is because leadership and management do not operate independently of each other. Leadership and management are integrated not separate The argument that leadership is a process of energy not a structure, fails to see a situation whereby in order for the change to happen, there must have been structures that are working which will drive the change, structures are present in every organisation irrespective of whether the head is a leader or a manager. In addition, a manager pursuing stability in one section of the organisation may involve a change in another, which is a characteristic of leadership. In the current organizational environment, these differences in management and leadership go to define the course that policy in an organisation will take in addition to the organisation culture that will be adopted in the organisation. References Avery, Gayle, & Bergsteiner, Harald. (2011). Diagnosing Leadership in Global Organisations Theories, Tools and Cases. Tilde Univ Pr. Boje, D. M., Burnes, B., & Hassard, J. (2011). The Routledge companion to organizational change. New York, Routledge. Rune, T , Burnes, B & Oswick, C (2011) 'Change Management: The Road Ahead', Journal of Change Management, 11(1), p 1 - 6. Caust, J. (2009). Leadership and creativity: understandings of this relationship in arts organisations. Saarbru?cken, Deutschland, VDM Verlag Dr. Mu?ller. Chang, S & Lee, M. 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