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Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things Let's brain storm

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Question added by Abdel Fattah Ibrahim , CDT Director , Colgate Palmolive
Date Posted: 2014/05/11
Deleted user
by Deleted user

I agreethe answerMr.tohamy

bader mustafa
by bader mustafa , senior cluster facilities manager , Mosanada

managment following the stratigic goals achievement .

leadership following the ideal tools & technics to achieve this goals

zafar abbas minhas
by zafar abbas minhas , Freelance Writer , DAILY MASHRAQ

leaders design and make standards,,,, managers follow these standards

IRPHAN GHANI
by IRPHAN GHANI , Senior Management , A

Management is doing right things and leaders are doing right things

BUT

AM I DOING THE RIGHT THINGS ?

Mohammad Tohamy Hussein Hussein
by Mohammad Tohamy Hussein Hussein , Chief Executive Officer & ERP Architect , Egyptian Software Group

I beleive that this is correcct. Leaders define where to go and managers get us there. One point here is a person can be in any of these two positions at any given point in time. For example, parents are leaders and managers and they nedd to consider which role are they palying at any given time.

Deleted user
by Deleted user

If we look deeply, we shall find that leadership and management are co-releated. In general, the managment of company may also be called as leadership.

So what I experienced till yet as of working with senior management is as below:

Leadership is a tool to implement the decesions of the management. For example, board of directors approves a decesion and the implementation is done by rest which is headed by CEO, so, we can cosider CEO as a leader of company. 

Now as for concerns for doing right things or not, is totally a different thing. As we look, there are so many examples of wrong management decesions like Daweoo corporation etc. 

So what I feel, management is authority to take decesions ( may prove right or wrong) and leadership is the tool to implement that decesion.

Muhammad Jahanzaib
by Muhammad Jahanzaib , Administration Management & HR Professional , The Indus Health Network

Leadership is doing the right things; management is doing things right."

This is a famous definition of leadership, which is used widely in teaching about leadership. It implies that leaders are the ones who decide what to do, while managers decide how to do things.

Leadership is a difficult concept to grasp, yet everybody agrees on its crucial importance. Let's start with a brainstorm.

One of the most outstanding leaders of recent decades is Nelson Mandela. Another, very different leader has been the late Walter Sisulu.

In the table below, reflect on these two men's different leadership qualities. What made

Now look at the following list of functions of effective leadership:

  • Conceptualising/understanding vision
  • Projecting and communicating vision to others
  • Initiating and guiding change
  • Mobilising commitment and support for change
  • Managing change - resolving conflicts and problems
  • Building trust
  • Building sustainability - developing others
  • Confidence in one's vision and oneself.

Did you come up with some of the same leadership characteristics for Mandela and Sisulu? Looking at the verbs used in the above list (and maybe in yours), it is striking that most revolve around charting the way ahead and inspiring (rather than forcing) others to come with you.

Obviously, not all of us can be Mandelas and Sisulus, but, while they maybe larger-than-life leaders, there are other, more normal-sized leaders among and around us including youth leaders, church leaders, and leaders in our places of work. The latter are, of course, those that we are particularly interested in here.

 It suggests that leadership behaviour does not only depend on the leader, but also on the followers' ability and willingness to perform. It basically says that:

  • where staff are able and willing to perform a task, little leadership is needed;
  • where they are able, but unwilling, a lot of relationship-oriented leadership is required,
  • whereas willingness and inability requires more task-oriented leadership. Here are two possible examples from the health sector: The introduction of anti-retroviral treatment for AIDS patients may be a situation where task-oriented leadership is required: staff may be very keen to have such treatment available for their patients, but they may not have the technical knowledge to provide it. Leadership would focus on finding ways to access training and support. The withdrawal of certain drugs from the Essential Drugs List may be an example where relationship-oriented behaviour is required. It is easy to do, but staff may be unwilling to implement it. The leader’s role in this case would be to argue, convince and cajole to win support.

Before we end this session, let's think about leadership and management in practice.

 

Let's assume that the national Department of Health decides on an HIV/AIDS treatment plan tomorrow. The plan has at its core the treatment of AIDS patients in primary care facilities throughout the country. Drug procurement and distribution has been ensured, so you don't have to worry about that. You are the district manager of your health district. As such you are responsible for the staff at primary care facilities. What would be your leadership functions (as opposed to management functions) to ensure that the plan can be implemented? Make a list and share it with your fellow students and/or your course convenor. Please note that the functions may look different, depending on the situation of your district and your staff. For example, a rural district may have very different requirements from an urban district.

So, why do we say that leadership is particularly important during times of uncertainty and change?

We said that management is doing things right. It makes sure that the wheels keep turning. No organisation can do without management, because things would simply collapse.

Leadership takes people and organisations forward. It inspires people to try harder, to do new things, to take risks. This is of crucial importance in times, such as ours, when work overload, insecurity and never-ending cycles of transformation may make people resistant to change, or when a great number of new roles and new tasks may mean that people are unable to change. Under such circumstances, leaders will need to convince, build trust, find solutions to problems and develop sustainability. That is why leadership is important.

Shoukat Ali Malik
by Shoukat Ali Malik , Specialties Moderator for Bayt.com community program, , Bayt.com (Middle East # 01 Job website)

Dear Abdel Fattah Ibrahim Leaders always give the idea but the management always make the strategy on the basis of Leader idea and managment team always implemente the strategy in the practical ground.

Shoaib Rehman
by Shoaib Rehman , Senior project manager , Etisal

Management maintains the organization... leadership develops the organization. Furthermore, the management in a company administers but leadership in an organization innovates.

 

 

Khatim Abbas Seed
by Khatim Abbas Seed , BUSINESS CONSULTANT , Google

Yes, I agree with the first part. I don’t always agree with the second.

 

In general, yes, a manager is bound by what are perceived as acceptable or commonsensible rules to his "managed audience" or those who appointed him, expecting of him (her) to manage those successfully. He/she is bound by more rules that demand from him/her to do things right (according to rules, procedures and aligning with strategy).

 

Leadership, on the other hand, is not always bound by rules, as it can be totally new or rebellious, breaking with established pattern and rules if necessary. Now, this off course can be channeled towards "doing the right thing", as people such as Ghandi, Martin Luther King or indeed Mandela (as Mr. Jahanzaib said) did, but does it always motivate "doing the right thing" really? The world has known various leaders who succeeded in leading intelligent masses through a combination of charisma, power of persuasion & knowledge, but who terribly failed in doing "the right thing". Some of such leaders preyed on people's needs and fears to gather them and lead them to their destruction (or the destruction of others). Think of war and genocide criminals who couldn’t have done it if they were not successful at LEADING people to doing the WRONG thing (the infamous enabling act in Germany, for example), to mention a sufficient example.

 

 

Off course this rhetoric shouldn’t indemnify appointed managers from becoming complicit of not doing the right thing (even if they follow rules, since these can simply be bad or unjust rules). It really depends on how you look at it, I chose in my answer to stretch out my view.

 

Deleted user
by Deleted user

For me, your question dear Abdel, is rather a combination.

It should be doing the right things the right wat.

Knowing what to do to achive a goal does not mean you can do the activity the right way. It's like giving the right answer (solution) answer to a friend's question regarding a problem, but the way the tasc is performed is a question of the person's ability to achive it. 

A true leader is a part of the management but is also an inovater who is a pro active achiver. 

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