Leadership

Introduction: for this blog, I have to identify the difference between management and leadership, then go onto using an organisation I am familiar with identify the key leaders from the organisation and analyse why they were effective leader, with links back to the theories.

What is leadership?

Leadership has many interpretations, could simply be defined as somesone who has the determination, personality and ability to get things done and 'getting others to follow' (Mullins 2008). Leadership is where one individual influences a group of people, the person tends to be passionate, motivated and has good communication skills to communicate effectively with others.

Difference between management and leadership:

Difference between management and leadership is that management usually abide by company policies, rules and are kept under control to achieving results, have set aims and objectives as well as co-ordinating with other members of the group to get results, whereas leadership is usually about getting tasks done and assigning them to individuals, leaders tend to motivate the group and are usually passionate and motivated individuals who like to generate new ideas. Management and leadership are commonly considered as being comparable, this is not true as a manager’s job is to plan, control and organise whereas leaders is to motivate and inspire individual to get the tasks done.

Example of a key leader:

At my secondary school my form tutor and also my English teacher was a passionate and motivated individual who took pride in her occupation which was educating individuals, she was fond of her career in education and encouraged students to do well, her personality reflected well in her job role as she was a sociable individual, she enjoyed talking to everyone and was easy to approach known as friendly character she helped and advised students about anything not only the work, she had the power to motive the entire class to success and do well she believed and encouraged everyone to achieve the best results, she also had after school classes in English and this was optional and she motivated most of the individuals of my class to go to it so that they had a better understanding  of what to expect when it came to our exams, she motivated me the most as she put students like myself  forward who she thought would do really well and exceed their current grade so she put me forward to do the higher tier exams and she believed in me and encouraged me to go ahead and do my best and get the grade I needed to go to college to do my chosen course in business. Therefore without her help, support and motivation I would not be where I am today as she believed in me from the start knowing I would do well and go to university.

Leadership theory it links to:

This leadership would relate to ‘traits approach’ theory as he suggested that leaders are born not made, no individual could be trained to become a leader if they are not initially motivated or passionate to succeed and get results. Therefore I would consider my tutor to be linked to traits approach theory because her sense of character and personality reflected strongly on the job, she was passionate in helping other individuals to achieve results and I consider her and a good powerful leader not only her personality but her passion, enthusiasm and motivation to help us picture the end results.

Conclusion:Overall I believe that leaders are born and not made as traits theory clearly identifies, as the individual has to have the right personality and passion for motivating others and getting along with the team members, whereas managers tend to do the right thing by following company policies whereas leaders follow their own perception on getting things done. 

References:

[1] Mullins, L. (2007) Management & Organisational Behaviour:  8^th edition. Harlow: Prentice Hall.

[2]Simpson, M (2012) PowerPoint.