Leadership and management have been known as overlapping concepts. The question here is there a difference between leadership and management or leadership is a feature of management and cannot be separated? Practically all organizations, including large corporations, academia, leadership theorists and researchers anxious about the difference between leadership and management and believe that it is important.
Leadership
Leadership has diverse definitions, according to some scholars; “The only definition of a leader is someone who has followers. To gain followers requires influence but doesn’t exclude the lack of integrity in achieving this”. Some theorists believe that leadership is no different from the social influence processes occurring among all members of a group and others believe that leadership is everything someone is doing in order to lead effective.
Management
Management has been defined as an art based on some definitions, and some defined management as a science. However it is not important that management is an art or a science. Management is a process that is used to accomplish organizational goals. That is, a process that is used to achieve what an organization wants to achieve.
Is there any difference between management and leadership?
Managers are the people that management task is assigned to, and it is generally consider that they achieve the desired goals through the key functions of planning and budgeting, organizing and staffing, problem solving and controlling. On the other hand, leaders set a direction, support people, motivate and inspire.
Other researchers consider that a leader has the soul; the passion and the creativity while a manager has the mind, the rational and the persistence. A leader is flexible, innovative, inspiring, courageous and independent and at the same time a manager is consulting, analytical, deliberate, authoritative and stabilizing. The most important differences between leadership and management have been shown in below figure.
