1. Despite the commonalities between leadership and management, they have distinguishing features that allow us to set them apart from each other. The major difference between the two is their focal points. To be precise, leadership puts people first. It’s all about leading, influencing, and inspiring individuals to achieve shared goals and realize a vision. Contrastingly, management focuses on various resources. It’s more about effectively managing financial resources, human resources, and marketing resources, among others. Leadership pioneer Warren Bennis also highlighted this key difference specifically noting that “the manager focuses on systems and structure; the leader focuses on people” (as cited in Gavin, 2019). Yielder and Codling’s (2004) characterization of the terms are as follows:
Despite these differences, there are commonalities that bridge the gap between these concepts. Yielder and Codling (2004) produced a model highlighting how the two can be converged in the academic setting. They shared key features of this shared model which are as follows:
2. An individual can be an effective leader without being an effective manager and vice versa. I think Yielder and Codling’s (2004) sentiments explain it nicely. They specifically noted that “in the traditional university (higher education) sector, promotion to senior management positions has tended to be based on academic prowess, largely relating to research capability. The result is senior academic leaders who may not be well suited to line or operational management. By contrast, in the traditional polytechnic (vocational education and training) sector, promotion to leadership positions has tended to be based more on perceived managerial qualities, and the resultant leaders may be more inclined to be good managers without displaying overt academic leadership”. This led them to propose a shared leadership and management model that allows leaders to be effective managers and vice versa.
Krista
MDE student
University of Maryland Global Campus
University of Maryland Global Campus | UMGC
References
Cambridge Dictionary. (n.d.). Symbiosis. Cambridge Dictionary. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/symbiosis
Gavin, M. (2019). Leadership vs. management: What's the difference? HBS Online. Business Insights Blog. Link to article
HRDQ Staff. (2022). The Similarities and Differences Between Leadership and Management. HRDQ. https://hrdqstore.com/blogs/hrdq-blog/the-similarities-and-differences-between-leadership-and-management
Yielder, J. & Codling, A. (2004). Management and leadership in the contemporary university. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 26(3), 315-328. Link to article