Will That Be Leadership Or Management Development? Integrating the Right Hand With the Left Hand

Introduction

During the 1990s, the topic of leadership took on new meaning and interest in organizations. As with many business fads (e.g. total quality management, business process reengineering, and knowledge management), the numbers of articles and books on leadership exploded to serve the insatiable appetites of business people, HR practitioners, and the public in general. Interest in the field of management diminished, while people explored such topics as spiritual leadership; the learning organization concept and its implications for shared leadership; women as leaders; lessons from such notable individuals as Gandhi, Thatcher and Churchill; and Native teachings.

While the plethora of new books and articles on leadership has contributed in an important way to raising the level of awareness and understanding on the subject, it has also created confusion, and perhaps more importantly, relegated management as a discipline to the back burner. It is only in the past decade where some prominent thinkers and writers have begun to stress the importance of management practices in organizations and the need to integrate this discipline with that of leadership development. While the two are distinct, they are nevertheless interrelated.

In a period of discontinuous change (that change is not smooth but rather comes in unpredictable bursts), the interlinking of management and leadership development is extremely important. No longer can organizations afford to address the two fields as separate silos. Instead, a systems approach is required to ensure that an organization's managers develop good management practices and solid leadership abilities. Combined, the two fields will ensure that those in management positions are able to deal with discontinuous change, and that their staff possess the necessary competencies to learn continuously, explore opportunities, innovate, and serve clients to the highest degree possible.

The Question

Before an organization jumps into developing a management and leadership development model, it is essential that the question be asked: who is a leader in the organization? Is leadership specific to management positions? If so, then leadership is positional in the organizational hierarchy. Or is leadership seen by senior management as being more inclusive, in which employees throughout the organization are encouraged to develop their leadership abilities?

This is a key question to pose because it creates a common vocabulary and set of expectations in an organization. From this will emerge a culture that is defined on how leadership is perceived and practiced.

The issue of leadership versus management development becomes a moot point if leadership in an organization is defined as being the domain of management. As we will see below, approaching the two fields as separate entities only further deepens the rift between them, contributing to misunderstandings throughout an organization, the ineffective use of training funds, and limited progress in creating effective managerial leaders.

If an organization chooses the path of participative leadership, as it recreates its corporate culture, the challenge will be how to create a model that reflects both management and leadership development. For employees in management positions, there is a rapidly growing need to have an approach (or program) that embraces both management and leadership competencies. For aspiring managers, these employees need to be factored into the process. The urgency for this is rising as the existing management cadre begins to retire in large numbers over the next few years. Those seeking to move into management are the succession pool, and hence require sustained attention in terms of their developmental needs.

For employees who do not aspire to be managers, or who will not progress to this level, the added challenge is how to encourage their leadership development, in the context of their participating more in decision-making and in taking more initiative. This assumes that senior management wishes to support the creation of a 'leaderful' organization because of the benefits this would bring.

The next section looks at what a number of leading thinkers are saying on management and leadership.

Management versus Leadership

The relationship between leadership and management has been described by Kotter (2001) as "...two distinctive and complementary systems of action." While each field has its own unique characteristics and functions, both are essential for managers if they are to operate successfully in complex organizations that are subject to continuous change. To focus on leadership development may produce strong leaders, but the consequence will be weak management. And the converse is true. How to combine strong leadership and strong management, so that there is balance, is the real challenge.

Similarly, Drucker (1998) sees the interrelationship between the two. He does not believe that management and leadership can be separated. He states it is "...nonsense*as much nonsense as separating management from entrepreneurship. Those are part and parcel of the same job. They are different to be sure, but only as different as the right hand from the left or the nose from the mouth. They belong to the same body."

A third perspective is that of Henry Mintzberg, noted for his early empirical work on what managers do. In an interview with CBC's Ideas in 1999, he explained that managers "...sit between their organizations and the outside world....they manage information in order to encourage people to take action." Where does leadership fit in his perspectives on organizations? The long lists of attributes and characteristics of leaders leads Mintzberg to state: "...Superman's abilities are modest in comparison. We list everything imaginable." For Mintzberg, good leaders are candid, open, honest, and share information with people.

From this brief review of what three leading management thinkers have expressed, one outcome facing organizations with respect to their leadership climate may be described as follows: When an individual enters an organization that is functioning well, one is able to sense it. Some call this the "smell of the place". It becomes very apparent in this type of organizational climate that there is abundant energy present, and that this energy is focused. People enjoy going to work everyday because they understand where they fit into the organization's vision and what their roles and responsibilities are. They are committed.

This is the challenge, therefore, of weaving together the roles of management and leadership so that they form a coherent whole, with respect to how the works get done in organizations. But what can we say about the key distinctions and complementarities between management and leadership?

Management & Leadership as Functions

Increasingly, managers must deal with complexity in their organizations and the surrounding environment. In the absence of good management practices, organizations fall into chaos, which in turn threatens their survival. Thus, one can say that management brings order to organizations and consistency to their products and services. Leadership, in contrast, involves coping with change. In a world experiencing economic and societal turbulence, this key feature of leadership is becoming increasingly valuable to organizations.

These two features, coping with complexity and change, shape the functions of management and leadership. In the real world, therefore, managers have three essential tasks to perform. First, they must determine the work that needs to be done by their staff. Second, to accomplish this work people must work laterally, often forming networks. Managers are conduits to ensuring that this occurs. And third, they must ensure that the work gets done properly and on time.

Management and leadership, while both addressing these tasks, approach them from different perspectives.

Planning

Planning, budgeting, and resource allocation are activities initiated through the management function in an effort to address the issue of complexity. As a management process, planning is about producing orderly results, not about change. Leadership, on the other hand, involves creating a vision to chart a course for the organization. As part of this process, strategies are developed to initiate and sustain the needed changes to stay focused on the vision. How this is done is critical to helping move an organization towards its vision.

Organizing

To reach its goals, management organizes and hires. This involves creating an organizational structure, including a set of job descriptions, that will enable the organization to achieve these goals. Through this process of organizing and staffing, management develops delegation authorities and monitoring systems. It also creates communication plans to ensure that employees understand what is taking place.

But the management function needs the opposing hand of leadership to assist it, namely in aligning people. Communication becomes a critical activity here, especially in regard to ensuring that all employees understand the vision.

Controlling

Management must also ensure that the plan is achieved, and it is does this through controlling and problem-solving. Monitoring plays an important role here. In contrast, leadership requires that people are motivated and inspired to work towards a vision, despite setbacks and unforeseen problems.

What does this mean for Management/Leadership Development?

This paper has shown that while management and leadership do indeed possess some distinct differences, there is also a complementarity that is emerging. The growth in knowledge work and the expectations of workers (e.g., Generation Y) are strongly influencing how both leadership and management are practices. Work still needs to be planned, organized, directed, coordinated, monitored, etc. But the context is changing rapidly, both from an externally driven, discontinuous change perspective, and from within - the values people possess and what motivates and inspires them.

How organizations approach management and leadership development is critical to their eventual success, let alone their long-term survival. And as noted at the outset, one of the first questions that must be asked is "How do we define leadership in our organization?"

References

Drucker, Peter. (Sept. 1998). Feature Interview with Peter Drucker. Training & Development Magazine.

Kotter, John. (Reprint Dec. 2001) What Leaders Really Do. Harvard Business Review. pp. 85-87.

Mintzberg, Henry. In Conversation. CBC Ideas. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 1999.

James Taggart has been a student of leadership for over 15 years, and devoted over a decade to applied work in leadership development, organizational learning, and team building. As a thought leader, he has initiated and led several change management projects. He has also worked as an economist for many years, conducting applied research into labour market issues; carrying out policy research in the areas of science, technology and innovation; and initiating projects focused on industrial competitiveness.

In addition to bachelor and master degrees in economics from the University of New Brunswick, Jim holds an executive master degree from Royal Roads University in Victoria. His master's thesis was on the topic of shared leadership.

Jim invites you to visit his leadership website: http://www.leadershipworldconnect.com

Management Vs. Leadership - An Assessment of Interdependence

Abstract

Leadership and management have been the focus of study and attention since the dawn of time. Over time leadership and management have been seen as separate entities, but those times have past. It is this paper's intent to prove that good management is incumbent upon the success and quality of the leadership that drives it, and by proxy, so too will poor leadership bring poor management that will lead to poor results, and decreased levels of success.

From the great minds in management theory: Fayol, Taylor, and Weber; homage being paid to Barnard and Mayo, as well as Maslow, Mintzberg, Drucker and Porter; to the great minds in leadership development: Jung, McClelland and Burnham, this paper intends to examine them all and bring them together as is required in this economy and these times.

Much time, effort, and money has been placed into the study of both management and leadership successes. Mintzberg and Drucker have done some of the best and most informative work at bringing management and leadership together; now, with the rising costs of overhead and decreasing profit margins, now is the time to connect the dots, once and for all.

Leadership and management have been the focus of study and attention since the dawn of time. Reference biblical scripture that questions the leadership decisions of King David and the managerial prowess of Moses and his exodus to the "Promised Lands" (Cohen, 2007); Plato helped us to manage the Republic while Machiavelli helped us to formulate our idea of what a Prince should represent (Klosko, 1995); Shakespeare questioned Hamlet's decision making (Augustine & Adelman, 1999) and trumpeted Henry IV's managerial effectiveness (Corrigan, 1999). John Stuart Mill gave us the "shining city upon a hill", while Hegel taught us the "elements of the philosophy of right" and Marx taught us how to manage a people in his overly popularized (and oft misunderstood) manifestos (Klosko, 1995). Thomas Payne rewrote leadership to the basic levels of Common Sense, while Thomas Jefferson acknowledged that in the management of a people, you must remember that "all men are created equal" and that they maintain certain degree of"unalienable Rights". Countless others have come to the surface over the span of time, all promoting a new or improved way to both manage and lead their people. (And hopefully yours, too, if you're willing to pay for it.) However, through it all, one thing has remained constant; people are not autonomous entities that will respond the same to every situation. People are evolving, thinking, emotionally and socially aware of all that is around them; they are motivated through different methods and they are driven by differing levels of success (McClelland & Burnham, 1995). Over time, leadership and management have been seen as separate entities, but no more: it is, therefore, this paper's intent to prove that good management is incumbent upon the success and quality of the leadership that drives it, and by proxy, so too will poor leadership bring poor management that will lead to poor results, and decreased levels of success. In today's fast paced environments, management requires leadership; you cannot have one without the other and still attain the success that you desire.

Reference any management text or publication and you will inevitably come across the obligatory references to the great minds in management theory: Fayol - the first to recognize management as a "discipline" to be studied (Brunsson, 2008), Taylor's scientific management of industrial work and workers (Safferstone, 2006), and Weber's bureaucracy; homage must also be paid to Barnard, Kotter, Bennis, and Mayo, as well as Maslow, Mintzberg, Drucker, and Porter (Lamond, 2005). These great minds have helped to forge the way for the management field and helped to better management teams across the world. The world of "leadership study" carries quite the similar pedigree; ironically, it also carries many of the same names. It is, however, this author's opinion that many of the additions to the pool of knowledge on leadership were not made known until the study of psychology was made more fashionable by the likes of Freud and Jung. Management, it appears, is a tool to better the bottom line and productivity, whereas leadership is one of those studies that is to be improved through the person's ability to be in touch with their personality, traits, motives and effects on the human elements of productivity.

There appears be some coincidence in the timing of the juxtaposition of the terms "management" and "leadership" and the correlation to the fact that most literature post 1950 seems to cross pollinate the two phrases. It is quite possible that this, the historical time for post war boom, is where production was at record highs and management of production was not as key as the management of people Possibly drawn from a social recognition that people were not to be managed, but rather, they were to be valued members of the team, and therefore, to be led - it is speculative, but it appears evident that entering the 1960's, most literature intertwines the "leaders" and the "managers" into the same professional classification.

Carl Jung (1923) posits that people carry specific traits and that those traits cannot be altered. However, much time effort and money has been placed into the study of both management and leadership traits, tendencies, styles, and successes. Why is this? One belief is that Jung only half analyzes the person and that more than your traits influence your leadership potential (de Charon, 2003). This affords the opportunity for you to learn skills necessary to become a better leader, even if that means understanding who you are and what your tendencies are, in order to counteract them. Jung's work with personality traits has become the hallmark to virtually every professional development and personal development course on the market. Jung stipulates that every person has any combination of sixteen different personality types. By definition, knowing these personality types helps you to better negotiate your way through the situation in order to attain the maximum output desired (Anastasi, 1998).

Running in concert to Jung's ideas are those of Henry Mintzberg. Mintzberg stipulates that much has changed since Fayol's assessment in 1916; gone are the days when the "picture of a manager was a reflective planner, organizer, leader, and controller" (Pavett & Lau, 1983). Mintzberg breaks the manager's job into ten roles, divided into three areas: interpersonal, informational, and decisional (2004):

Interpersonal Roles

Informational Roles

Decisional Roles

Figurehead

Monitor

Entrepreneur

Leader

Disseminator

Disturbance handler

Liaison

Spokesperson

Resource allocator

Negotiator

(Lussier & Achua, 2007).

Ironically, in today's interpretation of a leader, one would be hard pressed to find a leader whom is unable to do all of the above, and then some. Mintzberg, in later publications, however, goes much further in his assessment of managers and their roles in the organization. In a collaborative effort with Jonathon Gosling, the two determine the five mindsets of a manager (2003). They break the five mindsets into:

1. Managing self: the reflective mindset; where the effective manager is able to reflect upon the history (current and aged) to create a better future moving forward.

2. Managing the organization: the analytical mindset; here referencing a tennis match, where the manager must be cognizant of the crowd and their reaction, but also focusing on the ball itself.

3. Managing context: the worldly mindset; thinking globally and looking for the unorthodox solution.

4. Managing relationships: the collaborative mindset; where the manager is able to engage the employees and moves beyond empowerment [which "implies that people who know the work best somehow receive the blessing of their managers to do it (Kibort, 2004)] into commitment.

5. Managing change: the action mindset; "imagine your organization as a chariot pulled by wild horses. These horses represent the emotions, aspirations, and motives of all the people in the organization. Holding a steady course requires just as much skill in steering around to a new direction" (Gosling & Mintzberg, 2003, p. 54-63).

Gosling and Mintzberg conclude with one very interesting point. They stipulate that, unlike Pavett & Lau (1983) that good managers are able to look beyond the desire to fix problems with simple reorganizations. In fact, they argue that hierarchy plays a very small role in the actual completion of tasks on the unit level and can only lead to more bureaucracy. Which leads one to ask the question: who is to complete those unit level tasks and solve those problems associated with people?

There is no definitive definition of what leadership is, as it appears to change form and focus for each individual study. For the purposes of this paper, however, the definition set forth by Lussier & Achua (2007) seems to fit best: "Leadership is the influencing process of leaders and followers to achieve organizational objectives through change" (p.6). How do we compare leadership and management? The common misconception is that it is something that should be compared "straight up", or "even Steven". Obviously, there are natural leaders and persons in positions of social authority throughout every facility, and yes, it is incumbent upon the managers and leaders to empower those people to support the overall mission. Admittedly, some of these people may never become managers, but their role in the facility is of the utmost importance.

However, as managers are an industry specific entity, it is ridiculous to try and compare leadership to management outside of the constraint of the management role. Recognizing and accepting the constraint of the comparison, it must be acknowledged that in industry, you cannot have good leadership without good management; and in obvious juxtaposition, poor leadership leads to poor success rates for the management. It seems apparent that our management staffs should concentrate on growing employees into leaders, to eventually become managers; but if the managers themselves are not leaders yet, then much difficulties will soon befall upon that company. As Peter Drucker will tell you, it is imperative to build a strong management team, centered around strong leadership. In thinner times, gone are the days of two people for every position. Here are the days when a successful company is able to package good managerial skills into every leader, and good leadership skills into every manager. Failure to do so will result in failure to succeed.

"Drucker devotes considerable effort and space to defining the nature and role of management. This discussion also focuses on the nature and value of leadership in the organization. According to Drucker, leadership gives the organization meaning, defines and nurtures its central values, creates a sense of mission, and builds the systems and processes that lead to successful performance" (Wittmeyer, 2003).

References

Anastasi, Thomas (1998). Personality negotiating: conflict without casualty. Boston University,

Boston, MA: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Augustine, Norman & Adelman, Kenneth (1999). Shakespeare in charge: the bard's guide to

leading and succeeding on the business stage. New York, NY: Hyperion

Brunsson, K. (2008). Some Effects of Fayolism. International Studies of Management &

Organization, 38(1), 30-47.

Cohen, Norman. (2007). Moses and the journey to leadership: Timeless lessons of effective

management from the Bible and today's leaders. Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights

Publishing.

Corrigan, Paul (1999). Shakespeare on management: leadership lessons for today's managers.

Dover, NH: Kogan Page Limited.

de Charon, Linda. (2003). A transformational leadership development program: Jungian

psychological types in dynamic flux. Organization Development Journal, 21(3), 9-18.

Gosling, J., & Mintzberg, H. (2003, November). The Five Minds of a Manager. (cover story).

Harvard Business Review, 81(11), 54-63

Jung, Carl (1923) Psychology Types. New York, NY: Harcourt Press

Kibort, Phillip M (2004). Management vs. Leadership. Physician Executive, 30(6), 32-35.

Klosko, George (1995). History of political theory: an introduction. Volume II; modern political

theory. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Group / Thomson Learning.

Lamond, David. (2005) On the value of management history: Absorbing the past to understand

the present and inform the future. Management Decision, incorporating the Journal of

Management History, 43, 10.

Lussier, Robert N. & Achua, Christopher F. (2007). Leadership: Theory, application, & skill

development, 3e. Mason, OH: Thomson Higher Education.

McClelland D. & Burnham, D. H. (1995) Power is the great motivator. Harvard Business

Review, January, 81(1), p117-126.

Mintzberg, H. (2004, August). Leadership and management development: An afterword.

Academy of Management Executive, 18(3), 140-142.

Pavett, C., & Lau, A. (1983, March). Managerial work: The influence of hierarchical level and

functional specialty. Academy of Management Journal, 26(1), 170-177

Safferstone, Mark J. (2006). Organizational Leadership: Classic Works and Contemporary

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Wittmeyer, C. (2003, August). The Practice of Management: Timeless Views and Principles.

Academy of Management Executive, 17(3), 13-15

Kevin Vail is a graduate student at Norwich University's School of Graduate Studies, in pursuit of his Masters of Science in Organizational Leadership.

The success he receives in this program is predicated on a highly intensive curriculum, that uses his experiences from military, education, and corporate training environments. Both academic research and personal experiences have led to a wide understanding of leadership styles, traits, and opportunities for development.

Kevin currently serves as the TWI Implementation Manager, for TWI Training Solutions, Inc - a company devoted to the roll out and development of Training Within Industry's programs in the manufacturing industry. Currently participating in his third roll out, in as many years, Kevin has seen an increase of 200% in the Key Performance Indicators, by using the TWI materials to drive Leadership, Training, and Discipline in both the people and the process.

For further information about this article, or anything you have read in this text, please do not hesitate to contact Kevin at kevinvail@train2lead.org, or come visit him at: http://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinvail