CHAPTER 1
THE ART AND SCIENCE OF LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT
It has been stated that managers are people who do things right, and leaders are people who do the right thing. Other distinctions between leader and managers include: Transformational vs. Transactional, Leading People vs. Managing Tasks, Vision vs. Goals, Heart vs. Head, etc. While such distinctions serve to theoretically define disparate functional responsibilities, in reality roles of leadership and management blur since effective managers are also leaders and most leaders are often required to manage. Further, in reality it is impossible to imagine a functioning body that is solely transformational or transactional let alone imagining a function body with a head only or a heart only.
Personality, traits, analytical skills, communication styles, and people skills can often distinguish whether a person's natural inclination is best suited to lead and manage, manage, and / or lead. Nevertheless, it is widely accepted that leaders create a vision and inspire employees to translate the vision into reality while managers create and execute specific plans to translate the vision into tangible results. The smaller the business unit, the more managerial functions leaders assume but a business unit wouldn't have existed without visionary leadership nor it can survive without innovative leadership that anticipates, plans, and defeat the complexity, uncertainty, and unknowns of the future. Usually leaders display traits of innovation, grace, and inspiration while managers exhibit characteristics that tend to be functional, technical, administrative, command and control, and often expected to maintain or merely improve the status quo.
Caroselli, author of Leadership Skills for Managers, listed five duties that managers typically perform in the workplace:
1. They direct the flow of work within an organization versus performing it directly.
2. They perform human resource management-like duties that may involve the recruitment, hiring, development, termination, and disciplining staff.
3. They should exercise their authority role over-seeing the quality of work as well the staff 's workplace environmental conditions.
4. They should assist in managing the communication channel between staff and upper management; acting as the staff liaison and resource linker.
5. They should motivate their staff to perform and contribute to the culture of the organization and its business practices by getting them to take ownership.
Just as Caroselli posited five traits of managers, he also identified five traits of leaders, emphasizing that leaders find it difficult being content with the status quo. He said leaders:
1. Want to always make a difference and inspire others.
2. Create something of value that did not exist before.
3. Generate positive energy in their environment.
4. Create and invite change; being a change agent.
5. Apply vision into action, developing tangible plans.
The Nature and Reality of Lea
