Leadership And Management

Written by: Leadership Skills Australia http://leadershipskills.org.au

Leadership and management are two distinctly different roles with a somewhat
paradoxical relationship.

Leadership & Management

Abraham Zaleznic, in a now-famous 1977 Harvard Business Review article, was one of
the first scholars to differentiate between managers and leaders. According to Zalzenic,
managers are focused on getting the job done, whatever that job may be. While
managers are concerned with how work is done, leaders are concerned with what is
done. This view is echoed by Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus, who state that managers
do things right, and leaders are people who do the right thing. Yet Zaleznic goes further,
implying that managers are overly rational, somewhat detached and task-oriented—a
living personification of Frederick Talyor’s Principles of Scientific Management. By
contrast, Zaleznic views leaders as intuitive, empathetic and people focused—a
precursor to the emotionally intelligent and transformational forms of leadership that
became popular in the late twentieth century. It is important to note that Zaleznic
distinguished leaders from managers, not leadership from management. In Zaleznic’s
view, managers and leaders were very different types of people, each with their own
distinctive values and personalities.
In 1990, John Kotter, another Harvard scholar, offered a new view of the difference
between leadership and management. According to Kotter, managers are concerned with
stability, efficiency and order, while leaders are concerned with innovation, adaptability

Leadership And Management © 2010

and change. Despite this new focus, Kotter subtly builds Zaleznic’s view of warm,
inspiring leaders and well-organized, task-focused managers into his own model. Kotter
states that management is about planning and controlling, while leadership is about
setting direction and motivating people to help them get there. Like Zaleznic, Kotter
regards leadership and management as complementary roles. An organization that lacks
good management is like a ship without an engine, while an organization without great
leadership is like a ship without a rudder. Leaders steer their organization to new and
exciting destinations, while managers make sure that everyone is fed along the way. Yet
Kotter sees management and leadership as different roles, rather than different people.
Individual executives can and should both manage and lead. These new leader-managers
need to skilfully attend to both:
• the task at hand and the people completing it
• productivity in the present and positioning the organization for the future
Leadership and management are complementary parts of your job.

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Leadership And Management © 2010