Essay -Managing In A Turbulent Environment -Leadership - Management -Assessment Answer

Essay Assignment

Assignment Task

these are your two essay topics where you choose any ONE.

Choose either 1 or 2.

Topic 1

Managers have to deal with an ever-changing environment - one that is dynamic and unpredictable. Critically evaluate the strategies ofmanaging in a turbulent environment.

Topics 2

Managers have legitimate authority to lead - but many fail in their role to provide effectively leadership. The distinction betweenmanagement andleadershipcontinues to be unclear. Critically evaluate this statement.

Introduction

Management and leadership are the most significant aspects of one coin. An organisation requires both managers and leaders for effective functioning. For that matter it shall be noted that leadership is different from management. It has been a matter of critical discussion since a long time. Leadership involves motivating and inspiring people to do their jobs. Management denotes planning, directing, organising and controlling various activities(Tyssen, Wald, & Spieth, 2013). In an organisation managers have authority to lead but in many cases they are not able to provide effective leadership due to a number of reasons. The major focus of this essay is examining the reasons why mangers fail to lead effectively in an organisation. The essay will also lay down the difference between leadership and management and that will also help in examining the reasons behind failure of managers to lead effectively.

Effective leadership and managers

It is asserted by a research that all leaders are very good managers but not all the managers are good leaders. This is asserted on the basis of a research conducted on various leaders and managers. The role of a manager in an organisation is majorly related to delegating the work. The managers just confer the work on employees and they seek the completion of work(Raelin, ,2011).This suggests that managers do not guide the employees and due to that they fail in achieving the results. There are a number of traits that a leader requires and it is not necessary that every manager has those traits. Due to the lack of traits a managers fails in leading.

There are a number of leadership theories that suggests that it is not easy task to be an effective leader. Some theorists even argue that managers cannot be good leaders. As per the trait theory of leadership, every leader has some unique traits and because of those traits they are able to perform their tasks as a leader effectively. Similarly this applies on manager as well if the managers will have required traits then they will successfully lead otherwise it will not be possible for them to lead. Some scholars also argue that leaders have a charisma and due to that they are able to lead the employees. This is asserted by charismatic leadership theory. This also implies on managers that if they do not have that charisma then their leadership will not be effective. It is also argued that authority is not a significant part of leadership(Northhouse, 2010). Even after having authority many people are not able to lead effectively. The most significant aspect of leading properly lies in the situation and the leadership skills. There are many situational theories of leadership and these theories are based on the assumption that situations in the organisations are dynamic and it is necessary for a leader to work with changing situations. This is something that plays an important role in effective leadership. There are three situational factors that a leader must identify and these factors are task structure, position power and leader member relations. In most of the cases managers are not able to work as per the dynamicity of the situations and due to that they fail in leading. The situational theories are path goal theory of leadership, cognitive resource theory and situational leadership theory. All these theory suggests that a leader shall not only prepare him as per the situation but also prepare the followers(Grint, 2005). This is something very important that a manager shall follow to lead successfully. Along with that behaviour also plays a significant role in leadership.

A manager’s behaviour is generally different from what exactly is required. There is a specific behaviour that is required to be depicted by a manager to be a successful leader. The behaviour denotes the actions used by different individuals. The examples of behaviour are democratic, autocratic and laissez-faire(Arif, 2016). The managers are required to depict specific behaviour if they want to lead people. In this manner there are a number of factors that prevent the managers from being effective leaders even after legitimate authority. There are many mistakes that managers tend to make when they are given an opportunity of leadership. Some of those mistakes are not providing feedback, not making time for team, being very friendly, not able to define goals properly, misunderstanding motivation, misunderstanding one’s own role and misunderstanding motivation. These are the mistakes that affect effective leadership by a manger(Booth, 2013).

Difference between Management and Leadership

There are many people who assume that leadership and management is one and the same thing but this is not true. Leadership is different from management in many aspects. There are a number of factors that distinguish leadership from management. As discussed above, leadership involves motivating and inspiring people to do their jobs while managements denotes planning, directing, organising and controlling various activities(Binney, 2005). A manager is just concerned with the delegation of a task and getting it completed while a leader is responsible for inspiring and motivating employees to do a task. The major differences of management and leadership are described below in the table:

The table clearly suggests that leadership and management are actually opposite to each other in their nature. Managers have transactional and authoritative styles and due to that they fail in leading the people effectively. At the same time managers are paid for getting things done by others and they always seek comfort while doing their work(Austin, 2013). This is not something that leaders do. Leaders have transformational style and they focus on developing people by taking risk and not seeking comfort. In this manner management can get the work done but leaders help in getting that work done.

Conclusion

The reason that leaders have totally different approach towards working that managers cannot have plays the most significant role in failure of managers in leadership. A manager’s behaviour is generally different from what exactly is required. There is a specific behaviour that is required to be depicted by a manager to be a successful leader. All the differences that are mentioned above suggest that a manager cannot be a good leader because of the lack of traits that are required for good leadership. It can be concluded that only a leader can handle leadership tasks and lead the people in the organisations. Thus, organisations shall not overlap leadership with management. Both of them are different in their perspectives and mixing them with each other will simply affect the organisations negatively.