Today two of the most important aspects in the workplace are leadership and management. However, one is more important than the other. In the following paper I will be describing why leadership is more important and productive than management by comparing leadership to management. I will be doing this by describing skills required to be a leader along with characteristic traits of a leader. Many people do not understand the differences between the two. Finally, I will be describing why leaders are so important in the workplace by recounting the crucial role that leaders play in making their organizations successful. Leadership is the process of influencing others to achieve group or organizational goals. Management is getting work done through others. The primary difference between leaders and managers is that leaders are concerned with doing the right thing, while managers are concerned with doing things right. Although businesses do need both leaders and managers, primarily most businesses are overmanaged and underled. .
Great managers are experts at taking their current organization and optimizing them to accomplish their goals and get their jobs done. They focus on the here and now not the potential of what the future can bring. I once had a manager say to me, "Don't tell me what you can do for me by next year tell me what you can do for me now. " He clearly wanted results in the here and now, which is what most managers want, however, that is not enough. Great organizations need great management, but they must also have great leadership. Leaders go beyond the here and now, they have vision to look into the future and see potential on a different level. Leaders are essential for inspiring employees and setting long-term goals. Like managers, leaders set out to accomplish goals, however they do so in a very different way. Managers use policies, procedures, schedules, milestones, incentives, discipline, and other mechanisms to push their employees to achieve goals.
