1. Is It Important for You as a Manager to Understand the Difference Between Leadership and Management? Explain Your Answer. It Is Important to Understand the Difference Between Leadership and Management, as Both

1. Is it important for you as a manager to understand the difference between leadership and management? Explain your answer.

It is important to understand the difference between leadership and management, as both require some different skill sets, personal traits and job responsibility. As described in the textbook, a primary distinction between management and leadership is that management promotes stability and order within the existing organizational structure and systems while leadership, on the other hand, promotes vision and change. According to me, the key difference between leadership and management can be summarized as follows-

Leading people vs Managing work: Management consists of controlling a group or a set of entities to accomplish a goal. Leadership refers to an individual’s ability to influence, motivate, and enable others to contribute toward organizational success. Influence and inspiration separate leaders from managers, not power and control.

Circles of influence vs Circles of power: Just as managers have subordinates and leaders have followers, managers create circles of power while leaders create circles of influence.

Maintaining value vs Creating value: Leadership is more about adding value to fulfill vision of the organization. Managers works on maintaining the values created by the leaders in an efficient manner.

In my view, by knowing the key distinction between leadership and management, a good manager can develop into a leader of future. This will be beneficial for the manager itself as well as the organization.

2. What is the difference between the “situational approach” and “trait approach” to leadership? What approach seems to have more relevance to you as a manager? Explain your answer.

Trait leadership focuses on the traits of the leader. Common traits of the effective leadership include intelligence, self-confidence, integrity and determination. Situational leadership, based on a theory that was developed in 1977 by Paul...