Management vs Leadership qualities

Abstract

Both leaders and managers require critical skills to make good decisions and solve problems, although leaders make decisions at a higher level while managers make decisions at the departmental level. The article discusses the differences between leaders and managers, emphasizing that leadership involves driving positive organizational change through developing a vision. In contrast, management involves guiding and directing individuals toward common goals and strategies. The focus, skillset, and vision differ between these roles, although leaders and managers share common areas of responsibility, such as communication, decision-making, problem-solving, time management, and emotional intelligence. Influential leaders must communicate the company's vision, mission, and plans to the workforce, inspire and motivate their employees, and align their work and personal values with the company's objectives. Managers must execute plans to meet the company's goals, keep employees aligned with the company's central goals and values, and constantly monitor the situation and adjust plans to achieve the desired outcome.

The difference between managers and leaders

Leaders and managers are often used interchangeably, but there are significant differences between these two critical roles. While both leaders and managers play an essential role within an organization, their definitions of them are different.

    Leadership is defined as driving positive change within the workplace, which involves developing a vision or ideas to guide that change. 
    Effective leadership empowers individuals to turn their vision into reality, even with challenges.
    The keywords of leadership are change, vision, mission, communication, proactive, high risk, and motivation. 

    Management is defined as guiding and directing individuals who may need to be more motivated or misdirected toward common goals and strategies. 
    While leaders define the vision and strategy, managers plan and execute tasks to archive the goals.
    The keywords of management are organizing, planning, budgeting, nationality, control, and risk-averse. 

It is important to note that a manager in an organizational chart may sit atop the hierarchy, while individuals can lead without holding a managerial position. Not all managers are influential leaders and may be appointed for the role based on their technical knowledge and expertise. Leaders at any position in the hierarchy have naturally gained followers willing to support them in reaching the vision. Overall, leaders and managers have some similarities, but the roles are distinct. Understanding the differences in three main areas: Focus, skillset, and vision, will give a more precise overview.

Focus

Leaders focus on discovering ways to support and inspire their employees, mobilizing them to execute a series of distinct and collective undertakings. They pursue vital company initiatives, present new ideas, and drive change to an avant-garde mindset. Leaders communicate in a high-level yet empathetic way and trigger positive, slow changes by empowering workers to work towards common goals. Their job is to sustain the firm culture's core business values and mindset through their actions, genuine interaction, and choices, influencing how workers take and abide by that culture.

On the other hand, managers direct, maintain, and center their efforts on the process and structure of carrying out tasks, pursuing the firm's goals through synchronized actions. Their main work is to safeguard that workers in different roles with different accountabilities work productively while feeling that they can realize the objective. They continuously monitor the outcome by controlling workers and providing needed information, techniques, and tools to succeed correctly. However, some managers may need help understanding the reason for the change and may not even be aware of the change happening in worse scenarios.

Leaders and managers should work together to sustain the firm culture's core business values and mindset and achieve the company's goals. Two-way communication should be established among workers, managers, and leaders, and managers should adequately understand the reason for the change to reinforce change communication messages. With efficient interaction and continuous feedback, leaders can inspire and energize their workforce, catch their fans' attention, and motivate them to follow necessary organizational plans, impacting employee engagement positively. Meanwhile, managers control workers, provide needed information, techniques, and tools to properly succeed, and direct their employees towards adjusting to the company culture shaped by the leader.

Vision

Leaders typically clearly understand where they want their organizations to be in the next five or ten years. They recognize that they are only partially responsible for realizing their vision. Therefore, they communicate openly about the company's goals, prospects, and challenges to build trust and foster a supportive work environment. Doing so encourages employees to share their ideas, needs, and concerns, leading to a more engaged workforce. However, a leader's vision is only meaningful if they can communicate it to their employees. Therefore, leaders must inspire and motivate their staff to achieve the company's vision. The purpose is a critical driver of staff loyalty and engagement, so leaders must ensure that employees' work and personal values are aligned with the company's objectives.

In contrast, managers are responsible for executing plans to meet the company's goals. For example, the Finance Manager handles budgeting, while the Administrative Manager oversees staffing and corporate structuring. The department managers must work together to achieve the company's objectives. Overall, leaders focus on communicating the vision, mission, and plans to the workforce, while managers keep employees aligned with the company's central goals and values.

The similarities between managers and leaders

The understanding of the distinctions between the roles and responsibilities of leaders and managers is clear now. However, the two positions have a common area of duties, skills, and traits. While leaders and managers have distinct roles, their shared responsibilities are essential for success in today's business landscape. The following chapters will highlight the similarities in some of the most critical areas: Communication, decision-making and problem-solving, time management, and emotional intelligence.

Communication

Communication is a critical skill for both leaders and managers. While leaders have to focus when someone is talking to them, including what is said and left unsaid, managers usually do one-way communication. In an organization, communication is crucial; every single employee looks forward to being informed and prepared for what their firm stands for and intends to archive in the future. Communication between leaders interacts with the motivation of people, while managers' communication style empowers people to perform at their best and build stronger teams.

Decision-making and Problem-solving

Leaders are seen as influential individuals who can quickly make decisions and communicate them to others with a clear goal. They have a strategic problem-solving approach and a foundation for managing and addressing issues. Influential leaders can balance emotion and reason, making decisions that benefit themselves, their employees, clients, shareholders, and the organization.

For managers, Problem-solving is a continual process that involves evaluating situations, considering alternatives, making decisions, and following up with the necessary actions. This process requires managers to constantly monitor the situation and adjust their plans to achieve the desired outcome.

Both leaders and managers are responsible for making good decisions and solving problems. While leaders focus on making decisions at a higher level, managers make decisions at the departmental level. In essence, effective decision-making and problem-solving are critical skills required of both leaders and managers for the organization's success.

Emotional Intelligence

The connection between being a leader and a manager is understanding what motivates individuals and drives their behavior. This involves bringing out the best in each team member according to the intended goals. To achieve this, leaders and managers must possess emotional intelligence. Since organizations consist of people, emotions inevitably come into play in the workplace. The emotional states of individuals are significant drivers of motivation or de-motivation. A worker's output is influenced by their emotions alone, whether we like to admit it or not. This is evident in need to balance work and life and the importance of emotionally intelligent managers and leaders.

Today's world is fast-paced, not only in terms of business dealings but also in social contexts. Technology integration into our lives has accelerated global trade and movements of goods, services, human resources, and social customs. Consequently, the workforce is becoming increasingly diverse, with leaders and managers seeking to work with people from different backgrounds and cultures. In such a setting, being highly attuned to people's emotional states is critical. Emotional intelligence involves the ability to recognize and understand one's emotions and those of others, as well as manage moods and relationships. Emotional intelligence encompasses four key aspects: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and social skills. Leaders and managers who possess emotional intelligence can inspire trust and confidence in their team members, empowering them to engage in constructive endeavors. Conversely, leaders and managers who lack emotional intelligence can negatively impact their team members, leading to destructive outcomes. Since leaders and managers significantly impact their team members' drive and mindset, emotional intelligence is a shared trait that must be honed.

It is essential to recognize the relevance and importance of emotions in work outcomes, even if addressing the emotional aspects of interpersonal relationships can be challenging. When providing feedback or conducting training, comments must be given appropriately. Leaders and managers must be aware of their team members' concerns and self-doubt, which may be expressed or hidden. The higher a person's position in a company, the more critical it is to understand and address their anxieties proactively.

Leaders and managers must cultivate their emotional intelligence and people skills to attract and retain talented and motivated team members. Developing emotional intelligence requires diligent practice and targeted effort, but fostering this trait over time is possible.

Leadership style as a success factor in project management?

The leadership style of project manager is a widely discussed topic in the last years. Also, in connection with the leader and manager qualities in an organization. This section will clarify the critical success factors of project management. Further, investigations in different leadership styles in project management are connected. Where the term project manager is a comprehensive statement including many areas.

The effectiveness of a particular leadership style in project management depends on factors such as the project's nature, cultural environment, and team members' personalities. Additionally, the project leader requires good communication and time management skills. The project leader's role can be expressed as connecting the information of various stakeholders, motivating team members, aiming to meet project goals, and reducing costs. Project managers leadership style can be described as both transformational and transactional.

Leadership styles in projects

Project managers leadership style can be described as both transformational and transactional.

The transformational leadership theory, introduced by Burns in 1978 and expanded by Bass in 1990, emphasizes empowering team members' intrinsic and extrinsic motivation to achieve exceptional quality work and build supportive relationships. Transformational leadership involves leaders who expand the interests of their employees and inspire them to work toward a shared vision. These leaders achieve this by being charismatic, meeting their employee's emotional needs, and intellectually stimulating them. Transformational leaders are individually considerate, pay attention to differences among their employees, and act as mentors to those who need help to grow and develop.

    Transformational leadership keywords: Charisma (Vision and sense of mission), inspiration, intellectual stimulation & individual considerations 

The transactional leadership style is based on transactions or exchanges between managers and employees. Managers define the tasks to be accomplished and what rewards or penalties will be given based on whether employees fulfill their requirements. Managers rely on the promise of rewards or avoiding penalties to motivate employees. This style can effectively accomplish tasks. Still, it may lead to mediocrity if the manager relies heavily on passive management by exception, intervening with the group only when procedures and standards are not met. The effectiveness of transactional leadership depends on the leader's control of rewards or penalties and whether employees want the rewards or fear the penalties.

    Transactional leadership keywords: Contingent reward, management by exception, Task-oriented & reward penalty-based system 

“Managers who behave like transformational leaders are more likely to be seen by their colleagues and employees as satisfying and effective leaders than are those who behave like transactional leaders, according to their colleagues, supervisors: and employees’ responses on the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ). Similar results have been found in various organizations.” Transformational leaders are closely related to leaders, and the transactional style is closely related to managers.

 

Project success

Project success can be described with a traditional definition, but an important point from the studies while considering project success with project manager leadership style is, that a successful project, is related to the project manager's ability to share their own knowledge and skill as well as identify the project team’s knowledge and skills to coordinate effectively.

The traditional definition of project success is being completed on time, within budget, and meeting quality standards. Critical success factors such as objectives, project administration, third parties, client relations, legal agreements, politics, efficiency, conflicts, profits, customer satisfaction, effective communication, and scope are needed to manage projects efficiently for success.

Another essential point is that project managers usually are not considered one of the typical success factors in project management. „In reviewing the literature on project success factors, we found it largely ignores the project manager, and his or her leadership style and competence. This is in direct contrast to the general management literature, which considers effective leadership a success factor in organizations and has shown that an appropriate leadership style can lead to better performance.“

 

Leadership style and project success

The leadership style is crucial for the success of a project; based on the two project success criteria, the project is technically correct, performed as intended and meets client expectations. Leadership style, personality, competencies, and attitudes toward customers and team members are essential to project success. Empowering, transformational, and managerial leadership styles are more effective in achieving project success. For project management, the theoretical implications require more transformational leadership styles in complex projects and more transactional leadership styles in relatively simple products. Creating a link to managers and leaders indicated that leaders are more suitable for complex projects focusing on vision and long-term goals, managers are adequate for simple projects with an executive activities. The most successful complex projects are led by project managers with strong competencies in the Fifteen leadership competencies (Dulewicz and Higgs (2005)) Both manager and leadership skills are required, dependent on the different types of projects. For projects also the project team can vary widely in terms of business skills and techniques, the project manager should both be a manager and a leader.

In common among all the studies across the paper Leadership Competency is that different leadership competencies are related to different contents of leadership success. Where the competence of managers and leaders has a direct measurable impact on organizational performance. Also, the emotional intelligence skills of the project manager have a strong relationship with project success. This is also in line with the theory of Goleman, the higher in the organization's hierarchy, the higher emotional intelligence is required. Emotional intelligence and organizational support are essential for leaders to demonstrate transformational leadership capabilities. Leadership's soft skills must be honed and executed correctly for leaders to reach their full potential. A worldwide web-based questionary resulted in, that different leadership competencies are required for different project types. Some of the most eligible leadership success factors for all projects are critical thinking, influence, motivation, and conscientiousness.

Annotated Bibliography

Below, the titles of the most relevant references are given. The sources of the titles can be found in this chapter References.

• McQueen, Z., Leadership vs. Management.2021

- This book gives a systematic approach to the similarities and differences between managers and leaders. Further, it gives a good overview of the way to become a more effective leader. Additionally, it focuses more in-depth on the qualities of a manager and a leader.

Especially in chapter one, the differences between managers and leaders are interesting.

• Harvard Business School online. How to Become a More Effective Leader.

- The main purpose of this article is to answer the question of how to be a more effective leader. To answer the question a practical study to identify your leadership style and point out the most important points in leadership vs. management is conducted.

• Bass, B.M. From transactional to transformational leadership. 2003

- For a broader understanding of transactional and transformational leadership style this article will clarify this. Especially the term of how to transform from transactional to transformational will be discussed in this article. One important point is, that both transactional and transformational leadership styles are important in organizational success.

• TURNER, J. RODNEY and MÜLLER, RALF. THE PROJECT MANAGER’S LEADERSHIP STYLE AS A SUCCESS FACTOR ON PROJECTS. 2005

- The purpose of this article is the starting point on the topic of the project manager's leadership style. The different leadership styles relate to the six important leadership school in the past years. The topic is discussed based on a review of the different articles. It clarifies that the project manager has not been considered a success factor in project management so far and that there is a need for more research, also the research aim for another study is set.

• Müller, R. and Turner, R. Leadership competency profiles of successful project managers. 2010

- The article is based on a web-based questionary to answer the leadership competency profiles in project management across different project types. Successful project managers are highly connected to the skills: of critical thinking, influence, motivation, and conscientiousness. There are other sub-dimensions in different project types that are important for success.

• Ana L. Rosado, F. and Gregg A., T. A Framework for Exploring the Relationship Between Project Manager Leadership Style and Project Success. 2012

- A very interesting study with the purpose of clarify the project manager's leadership style in relation to the three dimensions of project success. This article shows a lot of different perspectives and concludes, that there are different leadership styles required for different project and different organizational structures.