Leadership vs. Management: Clear Distinctions and Roles

This report analyzes the distinctions between leadership and management, highlighting their roles in organizational efficiency. It explores theories by different scholars and discusses the importance of having both leaders and managers in an organization. The report focuses on the roles of a company's CEO as a leader and an operations manager as a manager, using Fountain Car Company as an example.

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MANAGEMENT AND OPERATIONS
University
Name
Course

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Abstract
The purpose of this report is to analyze on the leadership versus management. The roles
played by the managers are very distinct from the ones played by leaders but all the roles are
directed towards making an organization to be efficient in its whole operations. In this scenario,
promoting an individual into a position of manager does not guarantee him or her to be also a
leader in an automatic manner. The roles played by the managers are very distinct from the ones
played by leaders but all the roles are directed towards making an organization to be efficient in
its whole operations. In this scenario, promoting an individual into a position of manager does
not guarantee him or her to be also a leader in an automatic manner. The differences between
these 2 terms can be brought out clearly using several theories by different pools of scholars. The
main concept of differences is that not all those who are managers automatically become leaders
in that leaders have fans who stand by them whereas managers have employees who are given
directions on what to do as well as the methodologies of doing them.

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Table of Contents
Abstract......................................................................................................................................................2
LO1.............................................................................................................................................................4
Introduction...............................................................................................................................................4
Organization and management structure................................................................................................5
Roles of Manager and a leader.................................................................................................................6
LO2...........................................................................................................................................................11
Leadership vs. Management...................................................................................................................11
LO3...........................................................................................................................................................18
Approaches to operation management..................................................................................................18
LO4...........................................................................................................................................................19
Roles of a managers and functions of a leader..................................................................................19
Importance and value of operations management............................................................................20
Internal influences on operational management...............................................................................21
Applications of operation management.............................................................................................22
Conclusion................................................................................................................................................22
References................................................................................................................................................23

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LO1
Introduction
The society we live in is an organizational space which managing as well as leading the
existing in it, either internally or those forces found on the external part of any setting. These
forces are featured as internal environment and the external one. As compared to the ancient
world, the modern world is characterized by a higher morale as far as ensuring effectiveness and
rationality within any given setting of operation is concerned. Furthermore, the current has
portrayed stronger relationship between the people and the organizational itself than the ancient
world. This is agitated by management theories which tend to bring an organization together
with its key operations closer to the staffs (Ashikali & Groeneveld, 2015)
Therefore, management has been used interchangeably the word leadership to provide
the same meaning. In practice, leadership means the part of the organization which takes part in
setting the policies to govern the long relationship of an organization with its staffs. Practical
overlapping is the problem that brings confusions as far as distinguishing the terms leadership
from management.
Many theories have been put across by different scholars in order to bring out clear
definitions, distinctions as well as similarities that exist between management and the concept of
leadership as far as any organization is concerned. Such theories have helped organizations in
answering the questions as to whether leadership should be a management facet or the other way

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round. Bringing out a clear picture of separation in terms of roles played by each phenomenon
helps to form a basis of definition.
The key aim of this report is towards bringing a clear distinction of the concepts by
examining the role of a company’s CEO to represent the leadership concept while the
management concept has been represented by an operation manager. This report concerns
Fountain Car Company (Arena& Uhl-Bien, 2016).
Organization and management structure
Fountain Car company is not basically seen as a structure containing some arrays of
practices or plans but rather it is seen to be a composure of the people as well as their mutual
association. Furthermore, an organization is alleged to be existing when people mutually
interdepend on each other to pursue certain dynamic roles for the purpose of succeeding intents.
Fountain Car Company therefore, is made up of employees starting from the company’s CEO up
to the operational managers and their subordinates.

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Roles of Manager and a leader
The roles played by the organization’s managers are very distinct from the ones played
by leaders but all the roles are directed towards making Fountain Car Company to be efficient in
its whole operations. In this scenario, promoting an individual into a position of manager of
Fountain Car Company does not guarantee him to be also a leader in an automatic manner. This
is because an individual is bestowed the roles which best suit his/her place of offering services
and to the concerned parties of any organization. In a broad perspective, managers manage while
leaders leads (Anderson, Baur, Griffith & Buckley, 2017). In order to display a clear distinction
of the roles of the two prospects, the following points have been used;

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1. Leaders create a vision, managers create goal
Among the functionalities of the company’s CEO is that of painting a general picture
concerning the phenomenon he comes across. He develops a sight of the things surrounding the
organization so to use them to develop inspirations for engaging the involved persons. This
inspiration is used to turn vision until it becomes an actuality. The company’s CEO is an agent of
activation on the side the staffs by encouraging them to take part in something is very big.
The role of the company’s manager involves keeping a strict focus by setting objectives,
techniques used in the measurement as well as those used to achieve particular goals of Fountain
Car Company. It is within the management constraints to control all the situations required for
reaching as well as even exceeding the designed objectives.
2. Leaders are change agents, managers maintain the status quo

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Innovation is the main mantra of a CEO for he is always a gratified disrupter. Embracing
change is one of the roles of the company’s CEO as a leader. This involves identifying other
better means of perfecting a given process even if is in a stabilized state. He has a very strong
believe that any change made to the system is likely to create dynamic waves.
Manager’s role is constrained to only adopting the methodologies that work best for the
organization and sticking to it. His work encircles refining the existing systems, processes as
well as the organizational structures whose impacts results in making the system performs much
better regarding car importation (Ashikali &Groeneveld, 2015).
3. Leaders are unique, managers reproduce from the existing
environment
Fountain Car company’s leader is keen on maintaining the status of being himself. For
instance, the company’s CEO has been very active in building his unique as well as his
distinguished personal marque. He has portrayed a stability in his willingness in standing out of
his shoes. His roles involves authenticity as well as transparency while the manager’s roles on
the other hand has involved mimicking all the desired competencies from his peers. Manager’s
style of leadership involves adopting from the peer rather than coming up with a unique
definition. This is for instance, the company’s manager has been keen on observing what the
competitors are doing concerning the vehicle industry.
4. Leaders take risks, managers control risk
A leader’s life is ever directed towards giving a trial to anything new regardless of the
resulting impact, including even it means a total failure. This is due to the fact that the Fountain
Car Company’s CEO always has a belief that failure is one of the ingredients of victory. In a

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contrasting effort, the production manager tries with all his efforts to minimize the risks at
Fountain Car Company. He has been on spending spend his energy in controlling risks instead of
encouraging them.
5. Leaders are long-term oriented, managers reflect short-term
The Company’s CEO is driven by intention because he does everything he
pledges and remain constantly-motivated up until he has realized the desired yield.
His constant motivation is often unrewarded. Short-term goals are what constitute
the main role of the company’s manager (Bird & Mendenhall, 2016). This is
accompanied by seeking some constant tributes.
6. Leaders nurture individually, managers depend on obtainable, proven
skills
A leader is ever driven by curiosity to learn something new and dissimilar on a circadian
basis and failure to stand by this, he considers it as a failure. Therefore, leaders always struggle
to maintain his relevancy as far as dynamicity of workplace globally because he is more willing
even to seek resourceful information for the purpose of expanding his own knowledge. Among
the manager’s roles is that he identifies factors that made him prosperous so as to perfect him as
well as embracing verified models.
7. Leader makes fans, manager has employees
The company’s CEO goes beyond just creating followers to follow him but instead the
purported followers turn into his frantic fans as well as being his major promoters. These actively

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get involved in brand-building and helping the leader to meet his goals. Furthermore, a leader’s
fans help him in increasing his visibility as well as accelerating his credibility. The manager’s
role on the other flipside is all concerned with following a given and desired direction which
ensures that Fountain Car company’s goals are headed. The followed direction is always the one
heading to ensure that the manager is seeking to please his.
8. Leaders are coaches, managers direct
The company’s CEO is someone who believes that all the people working for him have
the desired solutions to the problem being handled. He trusts such people with the ability of
handling emerging issues as well as being very optimistic of his potential (Blomme, Kodden &
Beasley-Suffolk, 2015). He does not involve himself in telling others what they ought to do or
even how it ought to be done. Manager is expected in a daily basis to assign responsibilities to
each and every individual falling under his control as well as providing guidance on the
methodologies to use in meeting the goals of the organization.
9. Leaders are relationship-builders, managers are system- builders
For the purpose of b realizing his vision, the company’s CEO is known to be keeping his
strong focus on any stakeholder required to be bring the desired influence (Bratton& Gold,
2017). He is very keen on spending moist of his times with the stakeholders for he knows he is as
well as building a strong bond of trust through constant response to his wants and promise.
Fountain Car company’s manager is always focused towards building the desired structures for
setting as well as achieving goals. Analytics are the major center of focus to any major for the

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purpose of ensuring that the desired system is put in place to be used in attaining the output of
desire. He is keen in working with an individual as well as with the goals.
LO2
Leadership vs. Management
The differences between these 2 terms can be brought out clearly using
several theories by different pools of scholars. The main concept of differences is that
not all those who are managers automatically become leaders in that leaders have fans
who stand by them whereas managers have employees who are given directions on
what to do as well as the methodologies of doing them. In management, a manager
ought to have a title in order for people to follow them whereas with leadership, fans
of a leader will automatically follow him/her even if no title is attached to him/her
(Bush, Bell & Middlewood, 2019).
By using “Kotter’s leadership versus management theory”, several and
distinguishable features come out clearly. He defined leadership as that process which
involves leading a certain group of followers. He further advocated that the

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fundamentality of leadership is all about direction’s establishment as well as coming
up with strategies for instance developing a vision for it is through such vision that
leader’s followers feel happy about (Fischer Dietz & Antonakis, 2017).
Furthermore, leadership implies passing information to the stakeholders in an
effective as well as motivating manner. Such communications should not be
accompanied by force, this is connected to the fact that a true leader does not need to
apply his or her supremacy to make people to be his/her followers. Because of his/her
vision and personal brand, people will follow him/her by default.
In general, leadership has the following key features:
 Keeping focus on change
 Creating vision for the organization
 Motivation as well as inspiration to followers
 Communicating
 Earning commitment
On the management concept, Kotter’s theory delimits it as an act or a process that
involves controlling people as well as the environment that surrounds people. Also, management
involves using defined processes and systems. In highlighting the points that management
diverges from leadership, “Kotter’s leadership versus management theory” says that focusing on
the order as well as rules is used in describing management to be a combination of processes
(Grint, Jones &Holt, 2016). Also, if a manager has no leadership qualities he/she must apply
his/her authoritative power in order to have people doing things for them. According to him,

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management is much concerned with the control process rather than motivation, this is for the
reason that individuals have to follow manager not by their will but they ought to.
Kotter projected that the key role of a manager is towards driving for consistency. This
consistency ought to cause an effective running of an organization (Harris&DeFlaminis, 2016).
Conversely, leader is urged by Kotter’s theory to apply the contrary here, by pursuing “continual
adaptive- change”. He advocated that leaders should make and apply changes especially during
such periods of uncertainty and he never meant that leaders are seeking change just because for
its sake. Such continual change is key necessity for any organization to be in survival at all
dynamic times.
Another author by the name Bennis presented the differences between management as
well as leadership in a “black and white” manner and in unclear way to the real world. In his

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view, there is a possibility for those people in major and big positions within an organization to
lean towards those skills of leadership while others adopt managerial skills. He went on not to
support Kotter in his proposal that management skills as well as the leadership skills are both
required in an organizational setting (Lussier &Achua, 2015).
It can then be generalized that Bennis’s portrayal of a leader as well as that of a manager
is may be very simple and does not think through behavior of an individual, reasonably, it
attempts to position leaders/ managers in a very pure, distinctive boxes which might be
inexistent in the real world.
As per some other authors, these two terminologies ought not to be individually separated
out. Gosling was one of these authors and he supported the Kotter’s theory which advocated for

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the inclusion of the skills of both management as well as those of leadership (Morden, 2016). In
support of this, his theory came up with leadership mindsets which include:
i. Reflective mindset- this concept requires that the reflective manager has
the ability of adjusting his actions as well as conducting an implementation on the
required changes.
ii. Analytical mindset- it used to provide a deep analysis and it extends to the
required reflection.
iii. Worldly mind- as per Gosling’s considerations, worldly-mind aspect
involves being familiarizing oneself with the setting in which an organization is based.
iv. Collaborative mindset- this kind of mindset is based on the focus of
collaborating opportunities as well as the people who can be leveraged to ensure a great
success.
v. Action mindset- it is a mindset that incorporates all of the Kotter’s
concept on change as well as the continuity to be among the features of leadership as well
as the features of management.
In a different view point, Rost, an author, outlines some of the differences between
leadership as well as management as shown through the following points:
Relationship is the main pivot of diversion between two because Rost narrates that
authority versus influence kind of relationships to be the key differentiator. He used “influence”

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to outline that there should be no use of cohesion (Northouse, 2018). Furthermore, he chose to
use “authority” will be constantly using the coercion to ensure the planned things are done. In his
perspective, he gave a detailed reason why the relationship of leadership is seen to be in various
directions or multidirectional where he meant that leaders have the capability of influencing his
followers and on the other hand, followers of the Company’s leader have the same capability of
bringing influence that CEO. Also, this extends to bringing influence to supplementary leaders.
He continued to depict that a top-down kind of relationship is adopted by the management and
the influence exerted from that is very minimal (Renz, 2016.). This forms the main basis of
difference as far as this is of much concern.
Furthermore, Rost maintains that as far as leadership and followers as against the
management and subordinates are of apprehension, leaders do not perform the same functionality
as managers whereas the subordinates of management have the ability of being managers and
also at the same time, followers have that ability of being a manager. It is through this scenario
that a clarity is given concerning the fact that it is an automatic process for a manager to be in
“authority”.
Concurrently, Rost tries to put it very clear that there is nothing very good with
leadership as well as the fact that there is nothing bad with or in management (Riveros, Newton
&Burgess, 2017). He advocated that regardless of how ineffective leadership becomes, it
remains to be leadership and regardless of how the management becomes bad, it still remains to
be management.
Despite this scenario, theories belonging to Rost never advocate the goodness of
leadership or how management is very bad. This is for instance, it does not hold true to say that
all the managers remain autocratic while or during the process of making decisions (Riveros,

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Verret, &Wei, 2016). However, during emergency occurrence, it might be wise for a leader to be
autocratic and make decisions, for example, if a building is collapsing, a leader can make
decisions and orders all the people in the building to get out so as to save lives of the staffs or
any other individual in the same building from perishing.
Another theory that helps to clearly bring out the major differences between these 2
scenarios is the Zalenik theory. As like the other above mentioned theories, Zalenik’s theory
attempts to bring out clear differences of both the leadership as well as the management. Zalenik
puts that necessities are the main source of manager’s goals whereas active attitudes are the main
originalities of a leader’s goals. The main theme of this theory is to pass a clear message that
leaders have to spend his/her energy in inspiring people to possess creativity to be used in
solving a given problem whereas it advocates that ensuring day-day running of the
organization’s activities is the main demand required of a manager(Sosik,&Jung, 2018). Guiding
people on the things to be done does not make people to be creative and this limits creativity in
management.
Another theory is the Pascale theory which brings the difference using the thinking
capacity. Pascale believes that management involves incremental thinking whereas radical
thinking is for the leaders in the managers of an organization are very keen on sticking to those
process which have been tried and have proven to work (Stiles &Uhl, 2016). It means that
leader is keen on following his unique directions and this directly connected to the long-term
success of the organization at hand.
In general, various authors have tried to explain their diverging points as far as
organizational structure and management is concerned. Each of the theories has its way of
classifying its point.

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LO3
Approaches to operation management
Within the Fountain Car Company setting, operations management is among the key
areas of concern. It is a field which involves the process of designing and operating the various
process during the stage of producing a product, in a more clear language, it is the area of an
organization that deals with transforming raw materials to come up with a desired output. The
success of an organization due to high-competitive advantage is directly related with the proper
resource utilization so as to produce a product which meets the user’s demands (Swanwick&
McKimm, 2017).
Operations management constitutes of a variety of applications, sustainability as well as
speculative perceptions which differ inside as well as on the external part of an organization.
Such factors include capacity planning, management of inventory, designing the chain-of-supply,
measurement of performance as well as quality management. In Fountain Car Company,
inventory concepts as well as quality planning are the main concepts while the rest are used the
service-sector for a prime importance (Turnnidge &Côté, 2018).
In a product-based setting, inventory management as well as the capacity planning are
very useful in that they are keen in ensuring that the raw materials in addition to the finished
product are kept at optimal condition or height. Product development approach is used to
understand the strengths and the constraints while managing and availing the product. The
marketing approach is used in understanding the demands of the market.
LO4
Roles of a managers and functions of a leader
 Planning: manager of Fountain Car Company is the one who is involved in
planning as well as setting goals whereas the company’s CEO takes part in

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communicating out roles which were set by the manager to different employees of the
organization.
 Organizing: the company’s production manager is the one organizing the
required resources as well as utilizing them to ensure that the goals are met while
Fountain Car Company’s CEO is involved in allocating such resources.
 Directing: the tasks at hand are directed by the Company’s manager so
that they can be done their subordinates whereas the CEO of the company will build a
team so as to direct it on what to do.
 Staffing: this is among the key roles of the Company’s manager while the
CEO has obligatory to acquire the best of the employees staffed by the manager.
 Coordinating: functions of the Fountain Car Company are coordinated by
its manager to ensure better results while its CEO implements the best function of the
coordinate activities through the help of communication skills.
 Controlling: manager controls the implemented strategy while the CEO is
involved in authenticating the results of the standard employees (Turnnidge &Côté,
2018).
Importance and value of operations management
Being the process of input transformation to come up with a desired output, operations
management of the Fountain Car Company aims at meeting or exceeding the set goals. It ensures
the process end successfully by meeting the set goals and objectives in the following ways:
 It uses similar approach regardless of the industry. Operations
management uses a similar method which include planning, they organize, staffing,
process of control, directing the subordinates as well as motivating them.

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 Best use of resources. Operations management obliges the Fountain Car
Company on what it should do on a daily-basis.

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 Increases the height of productivity. This is through setting out the
portion of the required inputs needed to come up with a desired product pertaining the
industry. Planning and marketing are the key foundations of success.
 Optimum resource usage. Due to a higher rate of utilizing resources, the
organization will reap much success.
Through collaboration as well as coordination, CEO will at long last come up with an
efficient system of facts.
Internal influences on operational management
The following are the internal influences of operations management:
 Finance: the financial position of the Fountain Car Company affects this
process directly. This is because all the resources needed come at a cost.
 Corporate objectives: operations objective ought not to be in a
disagreement with the corporate objectives.
 Human resources: concerned with the workforce whose work will
determine if the goals of the company will be met or not.
 Marking concerns: concerned with the dynamic nature of the marketing
mix and if an ineffective mix is made, it might tamper with operations objectives.
In addition to all the above concerns, the general operations management is highly
impacted by the relationship between the in leadership position as well as those in management
positions. This will occur if either of them does not play his/her part efficiently (Anderson, Baur,
Griffith & Buckley, 2017).

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Applications of operation management
Application of operations management reflects all the sectors as well as any organization
and Fountain Car Company is one of such organizations. This is because it comprehends the
entire set of the production aspect. Therefore, in the setting Fountain Car Company, the
following comprise of some of its applications:
 Production : it creates the desired product relating to vehicle
 Marketing: used in demand generation for the manufactured vehicles and
are ready for launching.
 Finance: used in money collection as well as in tracking the normal
operations of the Fountain Car company (Ashikali & Groeneveld, 2015).
Conclusion
An organization is filled with managers who set goals as well as leaders who set its
vision. Therefore, outlining their dissimilarities helps to give out a clear picture in terms of roles
by each. Within an organizational setting, operations management is among the key areas of
concern. It is a field which involves the process of designing and operating the various process
during the stage of producing a product, in a more clear language, it is the area of an organization
that deals with transforming raw materials to come up with a desired output.

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