Leadership and Management: A Comparative Analysis

BUSINESS LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT
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Table of Contents
Introduction:...............................................................................................................................3
1. What is involved in being a successful leader?......................................................................3
2. Can good leadership be developed, and if so, how?..............................................................5
3. What distinguishes leadership from management?................................................................7
4. What have you learnt about leadership from your own experiences, on this course and
elsewhere?..................................................................................................................................9
Conclusion................................................................................................................................11
Reference List..........................................................................................................................12
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Individual
RelationalContextual
Introduction:
Leadership is the quality that the management of a business organisation incorporates, which
helps the organisation to achieve the goals, take challenges in business, maintain a proper and
efficient workforce. Leaders are responsible to take decisions that will help the organisation
to grow and outperform in the market. Furthermore, it can be said that leadership directs the
organisation towards specific goals. On the other hand, management of an organisation are
the directors who effectively take decisions about companies future and sets goals for the
organisation.
This discussion focuses on the role of leadership and management that helps an organisation
to gain success.
1. What is involved in being a successful leader?
A successful leader pursues few traits, objectives and skills that depict their ability of being
the leader. A successful leader involves three approaches which are Individual, Contextual
and Relational.
Figure 1: Approaches of leadership
(Source: Northouse, 2018)
Individual Approach:
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Every successful leader requires having some traits and skills, which helps them to work
more effectively. In order to ensure the self assessment of the leadership skills one needs to
perform the big five inventory test that will highlight the actual abilities of the individual
and state whether they can be a successful leader or not. The traits present in the individual
portray the intelligence, self-confidence, determination level as well as integrity and
sociability levels. The big five inventory test sheds light on the neuroticism factors,
extraversion factors, openness factor, agreeableness and conscientiousness factors of an
individual (Kayiş et al., 2016). For being a successful leader one needs to undergo the test
which will help them identify their strengths and weaknesses. Another trait theory that a
leader pursues is the Stogdill’s Traits, which helps in identification of the personality traits
that an individual has and can be used in situations requiring effective leadership. Great man
theory on the other hand assumes that every leader does not require to have inherited traits
and a leader can come up whenever there is a need for them (Straker, 2017).
The skills that help in identification of leadership abilities are Kartz three skills model and
skill based model. The three skill model depicts that a leader needs to have three skills which
involve technical abilities, human abilities and conceptual abilities. According to this model,
skills are needed to be approached by the leaders themselves. Skill based model on the other
hand highlights whether the individual has problem solving abilities or not and sheds light on
their special skills (Northouse, 2018).
The leadership styles that the individual needs to follow for being a successful leader is
Lewin’s leadership grid. According to this model one needs to mark them self using one of
the three leadership styles which are autocratic, democratic and Laissez Faire. This model
emphasizes on the factor that an individual must either be able to take quick decisions,
encourage innovations and support their staffs (Penney et al., 2015).
Contextual approach:
This approach mainly focuses on situational approach towards leadership, contingency model
and lastly the Path goal theory.
Situational approach:
This requires the leaders to match up with their assistants and focus on situational leadership
and adapts the leadership style which fits with the situations (Harrison, 2018). The leaders’ at
first needs to diagnose the context and then chose the style of leadership.
Contingency theory on the other hand sheds light on the effectiveness of the leaders by their
choosing of the leadership style. This theory emphasizes on the analysis of leadership style
and variables.
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