Management Vs. Leadership in a Healthy Organizational Culture
The tension between management and leadership can be hard to cut through at times, but in a healthy organization, the roles and duties of leaders tend to mesh well with the roles and duties of managers. Both leaders and managers have functions that sometimes overlap, but through solid communication and a well-accepted strategic vision, these two roles work seamlessly in a high-performing organization.
Leadership in business is about setting a strategic vision and inspiring others to achieve it. Effective leaders motivate action around a common purpose, and good leaders provide the motivation plus a healthy dose of integrity. For example, Kenneth Lay was an effective leader, but without demanding a high level of ethics among his senior staff, he was not a good leader--as countless former Enron employees and shareholders might attest. The company's accounting fraud led to top executives being imprisoned and the entire company to collapse.
Former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, in his book "Leadership," identifies his core principles of leadership: "Surround yourself with great people. Have beliefs and communicate them. See things for yourself. Set an example. Stand up to bullies. Deal with first things first. Loyalty is the vital virtue. Prepare relentlessly. Underpromise and overdeliver. Don't assume a damn thing."
Management is the art of execution. A leader sets the vision, and a manager implements it, making sure that regulations and policies are followed and that employees perform as expected and that the company operates within its annual budget. A good manager keeps employees motivated, delivers results on-time, keeps the budget in the black and ensures that day-to-day operations conform to the company's overall approach to governance.
Signs of Good Health
In a healthy organization, managers will accept the strategic direction shared by the leadership team and find ways to carry it out. Leaders will communicate clearly and honestly, and establish clear milestones. Managers will accept direction from leaders and add to it, adding the muscles and sinews of operational effectiveness to the bones of strategic vision. In turn, managers will honestly communicate successes and failures to the leadership team, to help keep the vision in sync with reality.
Signs of Poor Health
In a poorly performing organization, the relationship between leaders and managers breaks down. Leadership might fail to articulate a clear vision, or to communicate new priorities to managers. Managers, in turn, might tell leaders what they want to hear without actually working to achieve the vision--or, the management team might simply be inept. Without a solid, symbiotic relationship between leaders and managers, a business cannot maintain a healthy organizational culture.
Putting It Together
Leaders and managers do have overlapping functions. Some managers are called upon to be leaders in their own right, setting a tactical vision for some project or performance initiative. And many executive-level leaders must manage employees and coordinate budgets and write status reports. Although leaders and managers perform different tasks, their functions do cross each other, and most organizations cannot afford to have leaders who cannot manage and managers who cannot lead.
Leaders are usually in top management positions. In larger companies, they often have "chief" in their job title, e.g., chief technology officer, chief information officer, chief ethics officer. Managers frequently have the word "manager" or "supervisor" in their title. Directors--the top rung of most corporate management ladders--have the most even mix of management and leadership responsibilities.
The dynamic for small and mid-sized businesses is the same for large-scale enterprises. As an entrepreneur begins, she must often rely on herself for both leadership and management, but as the company grows, she will bring in managers to coordinate the day-to-day running of the company while she sets strategic goals and establishes a well-performing team. When the culture of a small business fails, it is often a function of the entrepreneur failing to recognize the need for both management and leadership in the company.
- Harvard Business School: "Introductory Reading For Being a Leader and The Effective Exercise of Leadership;" May 2010
- "Leadership;" Rudolph W. Giuliani; 2002
- "Harvard Business Essentials: Manager's Toolkit;" Christopher Bartlett, Ph.D; 2004
Jason Gillikin is a copy editor and writer who specializes in health care, finance and consumer technology. His various degrees in the liberal arts have helped him craft narratives within corporate white papers, novellas and even encyclopedias.