“Management is doing things right. Leadership is doing the right things.” This quote from Peter Drucker simplifies the difference between leadership and management.
- The Manager must be a leader and the leader must be a manager. However, there are palpable differences between leadership and management. In developing a powerful leader, it is important to understand these differences. Managers are responsible for operations, activities, and performance. They oversee processes and projects so that everything runs seamlessly to ensure that the intended goals are achieved.
- Leaders, on the other hand, are regarded as a “people’s person.” By inspiring and mentoring people with relevant authority and emotional intelligence, leaders build a vision that people can follow.
Business leaders tread on a delicate balance between being goal-oriented and a people’s person. Effective leaders know how to balance both while remaining open and flexible to adapt to changing times. Qualities such as assertiveness, intelligence, empathy, and conscientiousness are required in business leadership. To be a relevant leader that keeps up with the times, you must learn to be open-minded, adaptive, flexible, inventive and possess both foresight and initiative.
New problems require new solutions, hence, leaders in the pandemic era should evolve into transformational leaders. An article by Very Well Mind stated that transformational leaders are capable of immense plasticity, whereby they adjust their old or existing leadership style to suit current needs or adapt new leadership styles completely.
As a leader, it is essential for you to develop ways to tackle new and arising leadership challenges. Motivational techniques are part of the approach, and as you develop your leadership strategies, you need to identify and acquire specific skills that will enrich your growth and improvement as a leader. After this stage, you should evaluate your enhanced leadership skills and determine the when, where and why you should apply these skills. Leadership style assessment should also be conducted at regular intervals to help you become a transformational leader.
Achieve your goal of becoming a transformational leader by enrolling in the Leadership Essentials certificate program offered by Genashtim in collaboration with eCornell.
eCornell courses are approved by SkillsFuture Singapore for SkillsFuture Credit as well as by HRD Corp Malaysia under its SBL-Khas Scheme.