“Management and Leadership”

18 September 19, 2013

Kris Cunningham
“Research Paper”
OM 3503
19 September, 2013
Management and Leadership “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things”. (Peter Drucker) Up until the first day of “OM3503”; I had always thought of management and leadership as pretty much the same thing. I could not have been more wrong. A manager and a leader are two very different roles that an individual can take on. The role of a manager is all about some sort of “bottom-line” and being as productive at a given task as possible. They are in charge of tie of all of the loose ends to ensure that their team has everything they need to be productive and successful. In definition form, we can say that “Management is influencing people and other resources to achieve meaningful results.”(Hersey,2) They take the time to make sure that their employees are abiding by all of the rules and company regulations, they are well trained and that they are receiving all of the guidance necessary to get them to the next level. I myself feel as though 99% of the time I would take on the role as a “Leader” as opposed to the role as a “Manager”. I have a tendency to get too involved and care a lot more about every aspect of an employee’s well-being then just that of his/her work performance and bottom line. Leaders have that natural tendency to get more involved in the lives of their employee’s. “A leader leads based on the strengths, not titles.”(Benincasa,1) We can break-down the definition of leadership as” influencing people to follow in the achievement of a goal.”(Hersey,62) Another reflection of me being a true leader is my approach to it. I often offer any help that I can and give the employee the most simple”step by step” directions possible to complete whatever it is they are working on. A lot of times there can be a handful of great leaders that just happen to fall under the command of a “manager”. That’s why I feel that sometimes managers need to take special aware of their surroundings and allow for the natural born leaders to emerge from the business. These leaders may then step up and help and motivate their co-workers to get to the next level. In order for me to be successful in the future I am going to need to follow three competencies. First of all, I have to take time to diagnose the situation and surroundings of where it is I am working. This is when I can understand what the situation is and what exactly I can expect to be able to make of it in the future. I will need to know what kind of problems are around me so I know what issues I can work on solving. (Hersey,7) The second competency may take a little bit of time for me to adapt to. Actually, that is primarily what it consists of….”Adapting”. Adapting to my situation and altering my behavior accordingly. The third and last competency is communicating. I will have to study my subordinates and learn how to effectively converse with each one of them depending of what level that may be. I have to be able to get my points across and to effectively motivate him/her to meet their goals and/or quota’s. A foreign language might even need to be taken to communicate with certain individuals. Some of the big issues is that CEO’s and CFO’s will be approached a lot differently than my district and assistant managers. And then my foreman will have to be approached differently than my front desk attendant. This can be a huge task in itself. When communicating to my employees a certain amount of involvement will have to be taking place. And through studying my communication styles, I will most likely be pretty direct with my statements and use big-facts and super-high expectations. Through this I hope that I will be very effective in communicating and getting my subordinates involves and ready to work their way up the hierarchy. While communicating is a key element