Difference Between Leadership and Management

Since long, the deep-rooted difference reigning between leadership and management has fuelled a raging debate. According to Bennis, “There is a profound difference between management and leadership, and both are important. To manage means to bring about, to accomplish, to have charge of or responsibility for, to conduct. Leadership is influencing, guiding in a direction, course, action, opinion. The distinction is crucial.” In fact, leadership and management are both vital and complementary. Certainly distinctive in nature, they nonetheless remain two indispensable systems of actions in a business environment. The engagement into the debate to differentiate the 2 terms, calls for settling down on definitions in endemic framework.

Leadership has been subjected to various definitions, one of which is the “process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task”.
Keith states that, “Leadership is ultimately about creating a way for people to contribute to making something extraordinary happen” while according to Ogbonnia “effective leadership is the ability to successfully integrate and maximize available resources within the internal and external environment for the attainment of organizational or societal goals.”
This can be expanded into a more complex definition:
“Leadership is an interpersonal influence directed towards the achievement of goal/goals, which has led to the emergence of the Trait theory of Leadership”.
The leadership trait theory postulates that people are born with specific features which make up their personality. Since those distinct traits are linked to skillful leadership, it assumes that once people with the right traits have been spotted, potential leaders will be unveiled. Various studies have attempted to determine which qualities are essential in a leader. One American study cites the following: Judgment, Drive, Fairness, Energy, Initiative, Human