week 5 Leadership

  Identify the differences between management and leadership

The key differences between management and leadership are that managers have employees whereas leaders have followers. Leaders’ motives are to inspire and encourage their followers whereas managers need to maintain control and command, and this may lead to uninspired employees.
They both look for different things, for example, managers will plan, co-ordinate and achieve results by ordering whereas leaders tend to look for other ways of doing things that will suite their followers and this may lead to more efficient staff. Leaders look for flexibility and on the other hand managers looks for stability. Another way to define leaders and managers is that leaders are more compassionate and they are more involved with the organisation. Managers are more practical in having the tasks completed and reaching deadlines.


According to Kotter (1990), while management focuses more on problem solving and control, leadership focuses on motivation and inspiration. Leadership establishes a direction, which way to go, and management plans the way to the target. Management does more organising work and encourages order, while leadership encourages change and innovation. Management is rather impersonal and leadership more is personal, because their different aims. Leaders motivate, generate ideas and have quite big emotional connection with followers, while managers usually do not.

 Describe and explain the ‘managerial grid’ developed by Blake and Mouton. Think about someone you have worked for and identify the leadership style they used and where they would fit on Blake and Mouton’s grid and explain why



Reference: http://www.mindtools.com/media/Diagrams/BlakeMoutonGrid.jpg

The Blake and Mouton Managing Grid is one of the best ways to identify managers and leaders because it is split into five sectors which are: social, impoverished, middle of the road, authoritative and team manager.
This is a two dimensional chart – which means that if the managers score high on concern for people but score low on concern for production they care more about people then production.
These five sectors identify different styles of management, identified by Blake and Mouton (1964).

Social managers are positioned near the top of the grid but low on production which means they care about the staff more and they are quite relaxed on production.

Impoverished managers are positioned near the bottom of the grid which means that they require the minimum work (production) and concern of people.

Middle of the road managers are positioned in the middle of grid and have balance on the work load and people needs. These managers do not go the extra mile unless they have been ordered to.


Authoritative managers are positioned on the bottom of the chart which means they have low concern for people but care more on production because they want the work to be done and reaches the deadlines.

Team managers are positioned on the top of the chart on both sectors which means they care about both and try to develop a win-win situation. They are the ideal managers to work for.

Overall managers that score low on concern for production usually have weak organising skills and leave things to the last minutes.

In my case when I worked for Anthony Estate Agent as an office junior, the manager was very kind to me and I felt part of the team and after work we usually socialised with other members of staff. Also he listened to all our ideas and everyone felt motivated.


 Find an article/weblink that discusses a leader and briefly summarise what is has to say about them and their approach to leadership (include a link to the article in your blog) or choose an example of a strong leader from the exercise in the lecture, and explain why you believe he/she is a strong leader



Reference: http://images.mirror.co.uk/upl/m4/dec2008/3/9/88C6A182-E116-9250-26E2BD306BD5C253.jpg

A strong leader that I have chosen is Peter Jones because by the age of 16 he started his business and made it successful.
At a young age Peter Jones dreamed of being a chief executive operator of a big company and pretended in his dad’s office.
So at a young age he knew what he wanted in the future. In his school career he always wanted to do the best he could do and knowing that one day he could be a multi millionaire.
At the age of 16 he had completed the Lawn Tennis Association coaching exams and started his own tennis school.
In his twenties he moved into the computer industry and made it successful, but in his late twenties he lost most of his business through personal mistakes. Companies that associated with Peter Jones went bust so he was forced to sell most of his assets, for example, cars and house. He nearly became bankrupt.
In the same year Peter has joined Siemens Nixdorf and started Phone International Group in 1998. Now its become one of the leading brands in the UK. The business now generates over £200 million a year.
By the age of 40 Peter was considered to be one of the UK’s leading businessmen.
In 2002 The Times / Ernst and Young recognised his business as a up and coming entrepreneur and in 2003 he came in 13th of fastest growing business according to The Sunday Times.


http://www.peterjones.tv/index.cfm?fuseaction=PeterJones.About_Me

Remember to include a conclusion and evaluation at the end of this topic area on leadership.

In this conclusion every company has its own culture and everyone (person) is different. Every company has two different cultures which are hidden and visual. Every theory cannot identify all the areas in a company, for example hidden culture which can not be seen by customers only by staff. Putting companies into groups does not show how they work because all companies nowadays use and mixture of styles.



Bibliography and References

Benson, D (2003) Managers are not necessarily leaders [online] Available at: http://www.thefabricator.com/CEOs/CEOs_Article.cfm?ID=634 [Accessed 10 November 2009]

Callander, R (2009) Leadership [online] Available at: http://www.realbusiness.co.uk/news/leadership/5701436/win-the-chance-to-meet-dragon-peter-jones-thanks-to-bt-business.thtml [Accessed 10 November 2009]

Changing minds (2002) Leadership vs management [online] Available at: http://changingminds.org/disciplines/leadership/articles/manager_leader.htm [Accessed 10 November 2009]

Jones, P (n.d) Biography [online] Available at: http://www.peterjones.tv/index.cfm?fuseaction=PeterJones.About_Me&content_id=27 [Accessed 10 November 2009]


Jones, P (2009) Seriously business entrepreneur [online] Available at: http://www.seriouslybusiness.co.uk/2006/11/23/peter-jones-dragons-den-special/ [Accessed 10 November 2009]