Characteristics of Leaders and Managers
After reviewing the required reading articles by Kotter (2001; 2013) compare and contrast the characteristics of a leader and a manager. Are these mutually exclusive roles within an organization? Taking into consideration the position you currently hold or a position you have held, select two leadership characteristics that you would like to adopt and develop. Justify why these leadership characteristics are important to an organization and in achieving organizational goals.
Embed course material concepts, principles, and theories (all of which require supporting citations), along with at least one scholarly, peer-reviewed journal article.
One may assume that every manager is also a leader and vice versa while this is not the case since some managers do not portray leadership character traits while some leaders do not hold management skills. Therefore, there is a difference between managers and leaders since while the managers focus mainly on controlling and directing their assistants, systems, and resources, the leaders focus on inspiration and motivation of the followers (Sanger, 2013). Leaders are geared into creating a passion to reach long-term goals and following their vision while the managers aim at reaching the short-term goals and avoiding risks and aim at improving efficiency. However, these are exclusive roles as they shape the image and performance of the organization. For instance, a manager needs to control the operations of a company so as to ensure that every duty is well attended to and a leader needs to set long-term goals so that the company employees remain focused towards achieving such goal (Amaral et al, 2013).
Therefore, the roles of a leader and a manager play a great role in the performance of an organization. While a manager is a coordinator and an organizer, a leader is a server and a social influencer who strives to influence a positive change in the organization. These are both necessary in the organization. As a leader, I would like to adopt the positive social influencing characteristic as it enables one to initiate others into working with a vision and a mission to accomplish and this makes the employees exploit their talents hence attaining higher profit maximization. I would also like to be creative it increases the teamwork and workplace interaction hence encouraging good relationship in the organization (Sanger, 2013).
References
Sanger, M. B. (2013). Does measuring performance lead to better performance?. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 32(1), 185-203. Press.
Amaral, A. I., Meisingset, T. W., Kotter, M. R., & Sonnewald, U. (2013). Metabolic aspects of neuron-oligodendrocyte-astrocyte interactions. Frontiers in endocrinology, 4. Press.