Leaders Vs Managers

A leader is a person who leads his followers either to the achievement of a positive goal or through a process of achieving milestones. These goals can be related to anything like leading a country or managing an organization. There are leaders who also lead a group of people to the achievement of a negative goal like invading a country or performing an illegal activity in the smaller form. Whatever it is a leader is usually a strong orator and has immense capacity and ability to convince others. A leader always leads by setting examples for others first. A leader is a brave and has a clear thought of his goal.

The biggest of mutinies and wars have been led by biggest of leaders. It is however essential that the leader themselves understand the objective to achieve, thoroughly.
Biggest of Organizations have grown under the leadership of great entrepreneurs. Leadership however has been sometimes thought to be same as Management. This is debatable because leaders are not essentially good managers. Managers though have to be good leaders but they might not carry the traits of a good leader. If we talk about corporate leadership, then we can say that a corporate leader essentially has to be a people’s manager with added quality of Project management skills. A corporate manager will usually not be able to lead a mutiny or a strike.

Leaders of mutinies have a cause of independence and their objective is to break away from atrocities. A corporate leader is a person whose objective is to achieve corporate excellence by binding different branches and divisions of the organization into one bundle and targeting the common objective. Managers and Leaders have some different traits. Managers are more administrative but leaders are innovative. Managers control the people whereas leaders gain trust from people.

The difference between the two terms Managers and Leaders are highly debatable. A President of a country has to be both a good manager and a good leader. Leaders usually deal with a common crowd and en-cash on the sentiments but Managers work with executives or employees of their organization.

A priest or God man is also a leader in one way. Because they have a lot of followers following a common religion or deity, they have immense religious and spiritual trust which they develop in their followers. There are nations where priests can influence the nation’s politics in a huge manner. We can’t call these leaders to be good managers. Yes they are good people managers. If we take an example of Dalai Lama of Tibet, we find that Dalai Lama has been leading Tibet against the Chinese suppression. Dalai Lama is the religious leader of Tibetans and the chief priest of Buddhism but gradually his political importance has increased more than his spiritual character.

The Pope on the other hand has immense spiritual influence over the Christian community.
The debate between Leadership and Management can carry on for days together with no conclusion to it. However, the world needs good leaders as well as good managers to run it properly.

Linus Orakles
http://www.authorclub.info/