Leadership or Management Culture

A managerial culture focuses on rationality and control where leadership is based more of the effort to direct businesses and to fulfill their tasks. Managers focus on the process, while trying to create stability while resolving problems quickly. Leaders are able to handle chaos and will take time to understand the issues fully before striving for results. (Zaleznik, 2004). Leadership tends to focus more on the people aspect of the business while management is focusing on the transactional side of the business.

Leadership is very important in an organization as people are always talking about their leaders whether it be negative or positive discussion. A leader must be able to communicate the results and how to achieve them while including individuals in an exciting way. Engagement is one of the most difficult things to achieve because one has to be able to communicate the vision while inspiring people. One of the factors that plays a big part in this is communication while spending time talking about the vision. It is important to make sure that leadership has a consistent message throughout the entire organization; this will help with determining the culture of the business. There is a large importance behind culture in a business as it needs to be lived as well as communicated. It is important for the people within a leadership position the provide direction and be a role model for the employees of the organization by spending time with them and talking about the overall vision. For a leader to be successful they must care about their people and be able to put into context their ideas, so the people can understand. Leadership is looked upon for decision making so it is important to be decisive and be there to support their team’s ideas (Rock Star Leadership, 2015).

First time managers need to look after their staff and be there to support in career development. In positions of team leadership, it is important to care about your people as well as the welfare of the organization; with this also comes caring for the stakeholders and customers of the organization as well.  People in the positions senior leadership will need to be more focused on the welfare of the organization as a whole versus the people. It is also important to be able to prioritize and determine what needs to be done while spending time with their employees and understand what they are doing day to day (Rock Star Leadership, 2015).

We recently had some changes within our leadership structure in our organization and in these changes, I now have a first-time supervisor. This has been a tough transition as our leader has the tendencies of having more of a management-type decision making process rather than a leadership-type decision making process. There are some major changes that are being made to the job functions within our department and my supervisor is a major player in making those decisions although my supervisor has never been in our role or taken the time to fully understand our role and its daily functions. My supervisor is very focuses on the process side of being in a supervisor position rather than the people side and it has made it very hard to adjust. So with that being said, I believe there needs to be both leadership and management decision-making to make it work; specifically when you are a front line supervisor versus being in a senior leadership position where the focus needs to be on the welfare of the company overall.

References:

Rock star leadership [Video file]. (2015). Retrieved February 1, 2012, from http://fod.infobase.com/PortalPlaylists.aspx?wID=103246&xtid=77777

Zaleznik, A. (2004). Managers and leaders: Are they different? Harvard Business Review.Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2004/01/managers-and-leaders-are-they-different