Paper Example: Personal Capacities to Be a Good Leader Versus a Good Manager

Leadership and management go hand in hand but are two mutually exclusive skills and capabilities. To become a good leader, one should be a good manager of people. However, to be a manager one does not need to be a good leader as well. Management entails controlling people and activities, while leadership revolves around directing people’s vision for the greater good of society. Daft (2014) states that ‘leadership is more than a set of skills.’ In his book, Leadership Experience, Daft further states that management is concerned with attaining organizational goals most efficiently and effectively. As such, these two qualities are complementary to each other but attributively different from one another.

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To become a good leader, one should develop enthusiasm and integrity (Daft, 2014). The author also lists courage and humility as amongst the ‘subtle personal qualities’ that a leader should have. A good leader should have genuine concern and care for other people. Daft (2014) states that leaders are emotionally connected to their followers. Leadership makes people feel a part of the community, and willfully contribute to practical value to society.

However, the Leadership Experience book warns that developing leadership qualities takes time and involves great effort. One has to partake the journey to self-realization and discovery to have an in-depth understanding of oneself. True leaders have open minds and strive to welcome new ideas that revolutionize society (Kramer, 2020). To achieve this, leaders should develop discernment skills to know the needs of the people. Leadership is not about control, but rather it is about influence and accommodating divergent views of people to create a healthy society.

To become a good manager, on the other hand, one should develop a reasonable degree of stability and predictability (Daft, 2014). Management necessitates stability and predictability by creating a ‘culture of efficiency.’ Good managers should also develop honesty and cultivate positive relationships. Overall, managers steer the organization by ‘planning, organizing, staffing, directing, and controlling organizational resources’ (Daft, 2014). A clear picture that sets managers and leaders apart is vested in their role engagement towards key variable roles. These roles involve direction, alignment, relationships, personal qualities and outcomes.

As leaders create the vision and strategy, managers plan and execute the budget towards attaining company objectives. Managers organize staff into their respective roles, and leaders cultivate a culture that will provide learning opportunities and support employees. Leaders should develop personal capabilities to invest in people and use personal influence, and managers invest in people. Managers are also emotionally detached while a leader creates emotional connections. Leadership strives to create change by establishing a culture of agility and integrity. Management, on the other hand, maintains stability through the creation of a culture of efficiency. Through effective leadership, people get to expand their thinking and embrace new ways of life, while management creates a culture through which people work for the greater good of the organization.

All in all, almost the same qualities that one should develop to become a good manager are necessary to become a good leader. However, the above discussion shows that not all managers are leaders, but, necessarily, all leaders are should be good managers. The capacities acquired to become a leader, or a manager, are all tenets of project success. To succeed, both leaders and managers should blend their skills and have a collective grasp of all attributes of good leadership and management.

References

Daft, R. L. (2014). The leadership experience. Cengage Learning.

Kramer, D. (2020). The real world: Timeless ideas not learned in school. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.