Leadership and Management - Research Paper Example

Leadership and Management a) There are some basic differences between managers and leaders. Leaders have some typical traits such as they are innovative, develop new ideas, take a long-term view and inspire others to work for excellence. Contrary to this, manager’s immediate goals are short-term. Managers attempt to control and try to accomplish the things under set procedures and guidelines. For day-to-day work, managers are most appropriate; however, leaders are most useful when things come to guide the organization for growth and change.

As such, managers and leaders both are important for the organization. Whenever the organization needs a strategic direction for specific objectives to achieve, leaders need to take command of the situation. Leaders set broad objectives, and guide its entire staff through the critical issues while a manager attempts to accomplish short-term tasks for all immediate objectives of the organization.b)It is necessary to have effective leaders as well as managers for spearheading growth of an organization.

Leader plays a critical role when an organization needs a long-term strategic direction in order to survive and grow as forced by the immediate environment needs. While the leader guides through a specific objectives to fulfill, managers need to execute daily plan and take a follower role along with the leader to ascertain that organization treads on the planned path and makes necessary corrective action to achieve the broad objectives as ascertained by the organization. At department level, the manager focuses on the command and control functions such as planning, communicating, executing, or evaluating the various tasks.

The leader attempts to identify the needs and opportunities and create an environment in which people can support each other. In short, all roles are important for any organization to achieve success in the market place.     ReferencesLauria, J. (2013). Learning about Leadership. The Air University. Retrieved June 26, 2013 from http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/au-24/lauria.pdf