The correlation between leadership and management has been the topic of discussion for many decades. But still there is no clear definition – Does a manager have to be a good leader? Or does a leader need to have great managerial skills?
What is the difference between leadership and management? Peter Drucker states leadership vs. management as – “Management is doing things right while leadership is doing the right things.”
Leadership is the skill of an individual to encourage, influence and enable others to put in efforts to achieve organizational success. On the other hand, management is to direct and control a team for the sake of achieving pre-decided goals.
Leaders are people-oriented and they are willing to take risks and strive for achievements while managers are task-oriented and their main focus is to gain results without involving much risk. Leaders have a great charisma along with high level of imagination and risk-taking habits while managers are problem solvers, they are more focused towards the goal and engage in achieving it through persistence, analysis, and strong will.
Many times, managers prove to be great leaders, so the paradox is never-ending. But at least, we can now clearly distinguish between leadership and management.