MGT100: Gautam Buddha - Differences and similarities between a Leader and a Manager - Leadership & Management Assessment Answers

Leadership & Management Assignment Help

Executive summery

A manager is an individual with the ability to set and achieving the goals of an organization through forecasting, coordinating, organizing, training, evaluation, and monitoring while a leader is a person with the ability to guide and influence others to follow him. Leadership and management are often used interchangeably while they have similarities and differences as they both describe various differing concepts. As the managers focus on the efficiency of performance of the organizational tasks, the leader engages others by inspiring them through his visions and effectiveness in influence for people to follow him. Leadership demands proactive foresightedness with established principles and guidelines that can bring change while the manager has a short vision in implementing policies and procedures as a reactive nature to bring stability within an organization.

Question one: Similarities and differences between leadership and management

Introduction

A manager is an individual with the ability to set and achieving the goals of an organization through forecasting, coordinating, organizing, training, evaluation, and monitoring. On the other hand, a leader is a person with the ability to guide and influence others to follow him. Leadership and management are often used by many individuals while referring to similar cases of management depending on different situational factors as well as different level of skills (Heyns & Rothmann, 2016). However, this paper presents the differences and similarities that exist between a leader and a manager.

In his study, Kolb (2011) simply defines management to be a career while leadership is a calling. In his study, he notes that as a leader is an individual that is naturally followed by people through their choice, a manager is obeyed. A manager only attains his position by loyalty to his services within a company or organization over time and not due to his leadership qualities. On the other hand, a leader may lack the organizational skills required for proper management of an organization he can unite people through his vision.

According to Ross and Sharapov (2015), a leader has the main concept of change that shows vision as well as the dedication that is required for the realization of the vision. Leadership is thus a skill that is formed by experiences, education, interactions, inspiration, and practices. Effective leadership thence largely depends on how leaders effectively share, define, and follow their vision to the followers as well as effective formal authority for the leader to direct functions. As leaders take the long-term view, they are given the responsibility to direct a team or an organization as well as the achievements. They are thus expected to challenge the status quo, work to develop individual capabilities, and make changes happen so that they can achieve their shared goals.

Regarding the personality style, a leader is often seen as mercurial and brilliant with a very great charisma yet private people and loners. On the other hand, managers tend to be very rational and are always under control in solving problems (Ross & Sharapov, 2015). Managers focus on structures, goals, availability of resources, and personnel with their personality learning towards strong will, persistence, intelligence, and analysis. However, leaders are very comfortable in taking wild and crazy risks at a very high level of imagination of success (Heyns & Rothmann, 2016).

Leaders are the figureheads of the values and visions of the teams they lead and the organizations they represent. A leader thus suggests the heroic figure who people rely on to be united under a specific cause as managers and less charismatic individuals who focus mainly on ensuring things are done within their different facets of management. According to Kolb (2011), a leader simply looks at a problem and come up with creative solutions through their charisma, motivation, commitment, and focuses on how to solve the problem excellently. On the other hand, a manager creates policies, strategies, and methods that create ideas and terms that operate smoothly when to combine so as to avoid the occurrences of management problems that will affect the goals of an organization. As opposed to leaders, managers empower people by soliciting their values, views, and principles; a combination that they believe will generate success and reduce inherent risks (Heyns & Rothmann, 2016). As leaders are oriented on leading people to get achievements, leaders are oriented towards tasks in managing work to see results.

In conclusion, even though management and leadership are often used interchangeably, the two terms have similarities and differences as they both describe various differing concepts. The two terms both suggest the direction of activities by others. As the managers focus on the efficiency of performance of the organizational tasks, the leader engages others by inspiring them through his visions and effectiveness in influence for people to follow him. Leadership demands proactive foresightedness with established principles and guidelines that can bring change while the manager has a short vision in implementing policies and procedures as a reactive nature to bring stability within an organization.

Question two: An individual the group thinks can be a leader

Name: Mr. Gautam Buddha

In many of our group discussions and class work, Buddha always tends to lead others in affecting change. He is a very transformational leader who uses his dialogue and ideas to inspire, influence, help, and at the same time encourage change in the attitudes of not only the group members but his peers as well. Leading to change is his behavior because he takes risks for new ideas to evaluate the opportunities even in our field of study. He connects very easily with people and inspires and influences everyone around as he always views things differently.

Mr. Buddha has the ability for long-term strategic thinking, integrity, ambition, and communication skills. These leadership skills and characteristics are evident through;

• Responsiveness to the needs of the group- he is always effective in knowing the needs of our group discussion and other teams. As other people value trust over creativity, Buddha remains a clear communicator in all the facets displayed by his good organization skills. By the virtue that he understands the values and goals of every individual, he strongly unites all of us and even leads us to our individual communication growth. Every opportunity we have to discuss our social and academic issues, he gives every individual the opportunity to express their ideas towards the topic of discussion, a step that has seen many of us grow in their communication skills.
• He is a good organizer- as an effective leader we see him be, Buddha knows the overall purpose of the team ad will always help in formulating the team strategies in that will be vital in meeting the specific goals and objectives of the group. Every individual thus understand their responsibilities in the big picture and understands the roles they need to play in helping every team member to thrive through their weaknesses. It thus supports the idea of Harrison and Rouse (2014) who in their review reports that full knowledge of your team of organization outside and within is very vital in becoming an effective leader.
• He controls activities, motivates and inspires people, and solves problems. He sets directions in every plan of the team and always believes we can do it despite the challenges the team may face in the process of our academic journey.
• He has a sharp perception- Buddha has a very easy level and way of honest communication with our team and fellow peers. He is keen in observing simple behaviors that people tend to ignore such as time management, an organization of work, responsibility and contribution in the group, as well as the welfare of every individual. In our times of meetings, we are all encouraged to be responsible for each other thus making as responsible for every absenteeism, a duty that all begun under his leadership.

As team members, we periodically undergo a stock assessment of our shortcomings and strengths. In the process, we can support each other and supplement our skills so as to improve on our abilities for better performances in various areas of weaknesses. Having seen many of the leadership qualities in him, Buddha was given the responsibility of leadership. It is a role that he plays effectively, not only in our team but even other groups he leads as well.

Question 3: Planning, organizing, and decision-making process of the group in doing the assignment

According to Boyer et al. (2016), planning is the process of advance determination of what needs to be accomplished as well as by who, where, how, and when the assignment shall be completed. Planning, organizing, and proper decision-making is thus the major determinants of productivity and success of a group work. As the whole processes of a successful team work involve systematic and logical activity coupled with a sequence of steps that are vital in accomplishing, we first determined what the whole assignment required and divided the work into sections with the help of Buddha as our leader.

The planning and organization process began with planning and formulation of achievable and measurable goals and objectives of the assignment. The task was divided into different segments as per the rubric and guidelines of the assignment so as to cover every section of the work. With the whole group taking part in the planning process, every individual was given a responsibility to do extensive research on the concept of leadership and management. We then developed a cost and time strategy for the discussion of the assignment where we shared the ideas we had gathered from our research.

The decision-making in the assignment involved the collection of relevant information on management and leadership, organizing the information followed by the synthesis of the information into a useful report form. Every student has his points somewhere then followed by a group discussion where we evaluated every point from every individual so as to come up with the final report if the paper. However, the planning, organization, and decision-making process were guided by the following;

• Avoiding biases of the information gathered such as using an individual’s point of view
• Jumping into conclusion
• Creating differences and similarities between management and leadership
• Selecting only relevant information towards the topic of discussion
• Every individual had to participate in the study and completion of the assignment instructions

With the unity of the group members under the able leadership of John, the assignment process was very successful, and we expect the best results after our report has been marked.