What Is the Difference Between Management and Leadership?

The general agreement on this debate, however, is that the two concepts differ in many ways, but that they ultimately have to go together to enhance the other’s effectiveness.

For one to fully grasp how to maintain a perfect blend of leadership and management, one needs to identify how the two are different first. Here are some major ways they contrast each other:

I. The Technical vs the Creative

A significant delineation set by many experts between management and leadership is that the former focuses strictly on implementing its functions while the latter goes beyond meeting goals and creates other ways to do it. In simple terms, management is considered a dogmatic pursuit concerned only in maximizing productivity (and other related targets) while leadership is a more flexible concept that can bend rules when it has to.

According to lessons from project management courses, leadership, unlike management, forces a person, such as a leader, to come up with innovations. It is because of this description of leaders why they are considered the originals. On the other hand, managers, who merely apply what is already known, are seen as copies. This is also to say that management is focused broadly on technicality, and that any management training only prepares potential managers to deal with circumstances according to whatever available knowledge they are provided with.

II. The Supervisor vs the Motivator

Another difference between leaders and managers is their approach to handling operations and people. Managers are often the superior member of the team who hands out work assignments, monitors if employees are doing their tasks, and ensures everything meets the set goals. This is an exact adherence to rules that successfully yields efficiency, but can be enhanced by the contrasting characteristics of leadership.

Leaders seek to reach out and improve the people under them. They empower and motivate the employees so that efficiency will not only be advantageous for the organization but for the workers as well. Leaders also go beyond the dissemination of assignments and they do the right thing of explaining to the employees the purposes of their individual tasks. 

This would focus on people improvement can also be seen in leaders who provide relevant training courses from Hemsley Fraser as well as personal encouragement to develop the employees’ potential.