What Leaders Really Do

Research Article Summary and Analysis

 What Leaders Really Do

The article distinguished from the leaders and managers and asserted that management is
concerned and coping with the complexities resulted from the large size of organizations, however,
leadership is dealing and coping with change in organization. The former’s result is quality and
productivity, while the latter is concerned with survival. An example is dealing troops in peace time
is management, however, in the battle field leadership is more important than management. Both
leadership and management performs three tasks differently i.e., deciding what to be done, creating
networks of people to get it done, and ensuring they are doing the activities effectively. The details
of the activities required for the above three tasks are provided below.

Leadership is setting a direction – developing a vision for the future (relatively long term), however,
management is planning and budgeting – setting yearly or quarterly goals and targets for the
achievement of first task i.e., deciding what to be done. Management deals with the organizing and
staffing for creating a network of people to achieve the targets/goals, however, the leadership is
aligning the people – communicating the vision to those, who can form coalitions and are capable of
achieving the goal of vision. For ensuring plans accomplishment, management is controlling and
solving problems – assessing results against the planned objectives, however, leadership is
motivating and inspiring people – keeping people moving in the right direction to ensure
accomplishment of the tasks.

Setting direction is an inductive approach, which deals with the change and produce vision and
strategies – which need not to be innovative and can be combination of already known practices,
(for example Scandinavian Airline System focused on business travelers and developed the system
accordingly, which worked for them). Novelty is not important in vision, what is important is how the
vision is targeting its stakeholders and achieved. Certain over managed and under led companies
failed due to emphasizing only on long term planning and ignoring other issues i.e., direction, vision
etc. On the other hand ‘long term planning’ - a deductive approach and produce results, which is
often considered by successful companies as phrase of contradictory terms is a time consuming
process and without a clear vision and direction even short term plans become burdensome.
Planning is not the substitute for direction, but it complements the direction/vision.

The second task is staffing people for achievement of the task (for managers) and aligning people
to move in the same direction (for leaders). Tasks are interdependent in organizations when they
are growing, hence difficult to move them in the same direction in the time of change, which is the
responsibility of the leader. Providing people, creating chain of command, development
infrastructure and organizational structure for the achievement of the set objectives is the
management’s role (design), however leadership deals with alignment of the people in the same
direction in the times of change (extensive communication). The factors affecting the leadership role
in aligning people includes communication of the vision, credibility of the communicator (leader) and
people’s empowerment.

Motivating and inspiring people versus controlling and problem solving which deals with overcoming
the barriers, which hindering the process of change. Management focuses on controlling and
problem solving through diagnosis mechanism and overcoming the same with providing incentives
both monetary as well as non-monetary. However, in case of change, the leadership plays an
important role in motivating people to be on the same direction and overcoming the obstacles in the
way thereof. Leadership is more about motivating people to achieve the targets, i.e., considering
the values of audiences while communicating the vision, empowerment, involvement in decision
making, appropriate and fair reward and punishment methods, due to which the work itself
becomes factor intrinsic motivation for the employees.

One of the important factors for fostering leadership is providing conducive and favorable culture for
the promotion thereof. Hiring potential leaders is one of the basic steps in fostering leadership
culture. Leaders learn from both the triumph and failure and take them as opportunities for their
learning instead of losing their confidence. Providing challenging tasks to employees who are
seemed to be having leadership skills and attributes, help them enhance their capabilities as
leaders, which is done through decentralization and developing a corporate culture in the
organization, which fosters the risk taking behaviors of the employees – the potential leaders.
Institutionalizing a leadership-centered culture is the ultimate act of leadership, i.e., continuous
support for the potential leaders in terms of on-the-job training, and providing with mentors and
assigning challenging tasks to them in their early stages in the job, which work as catalyst in the
process of the change in the organizations.

COMMENTS
All leaders are good managers, but not all managers are good leaders. To be a leader one should
demonstrate certain level of risk taking attitude and highly persuasive skills. Leaders are not
produced through a designated curriculum programs, but the mangers are most of the time those
who are managers by profession (MBAs or other management sciences graduates). The self-
efficacy is very useful tool in developing leadership skills and learning from failures (in order to
avoid or improve, what is lacking) augment the former in these skills.