Who is a Leader ?
Leader is a person who influences
other people by inspiring, motivating and directing them on their activities to
achieve group or organizational goals and objectives. Many
people have dreams and ideas for a better future of themselves and their institutions and
somehow most of these people can’t get their dreams in
their lives.
Influencing of these people is a mental image
grows inside the mind of leaders and
it depends on his or her competency to perceive the things accurately and
use them intelligently for a
better future and sustainability of an organization. The leader is also a person who may have dreams like other people, but also has an ability to
turn these dreams and ideas into
reality. This is the basic difference between
the dreamer and leader.
Leaders
are following suitable strategic activities to gain higher-average outcomes and
are fully conscious about planning strategically for the future of their organizations
and take part in the effective enactment regarding these well-planned schemes (Jabbar
and Hussein, 2017).
The leader’s role is very important in implementing
a well-structured way to manage
the behavior and attitudes of people working together.
It
also requires strong commitment of all the people who work together to
achieve the common vision of organisation.
Definition of Leadership
As per Peter, (2016)
Definition of leadership is a process which is
not a trait or characteristic that resides in the leader, but an event that a leader affects and is affected by followers. It
emphasizes that leadership is not a linear, one-way event, but rather an interactive
event. When leadership is defined in this manner, it becomes available to
everyone and it is not restricted to the formally designated leader in a group.
Leadership involves influence and in
other word. It is concerned with how the leader affects followers and we
can say that without influence, leadership does not exist. Leadership that is
based on occupying a position in an organization is assigned leadership. Team
leaders, plant managers, department heads, directors, and administrators are all
examples of assigned leadership. According
to Azhar et al. (2012), Leadership
has significant impact on determine the vision and mission of the organization
and it facilitates the organization to execute effective strategies to achieve
that vision. Leadership influenced employees, decision making process
and strategic management process in order to facilitate the whole process. The strategy
implementation is fully depends upon efficient decision making of leadership.
Leadership
quality plays as a key role in forming and enforcing a strategy. It work as a
link between the heart of the institution
with its body and leader is responsible for encouraging the institutions to
become successful and this success comes out of making effective decisions for
the formulation of strategy. Strategic leadership is a process that transforms
organization into successful organization and it is the responsibility of
leadership to motivate and inspire the peoples in the organization to work together
and translate the organization’s vision into reality. Mostly in the
organizations efficient leaders perform the common tasks in the strategy making
and executing process (Jabbar and Hussein, 2017).
Relationship between Leadership and Management
Leadership and Management are two distinctive and complementary systems and each has its own
function and characteristic activities. Management develops the capacity to
achieve its plan. Managers are fulfilling this by planning, leading, organizing and controlling the organizational
structure. Setting of jobs for accomplishing the organizational requirements,
staffing with qualified individuals, communicating with those people,
delegating responsibility are key elements. The leadership activity is aligning people and communicating a
new direction to them for achieving given targets (Kotter, 2001).
Leadership is a
process that is similar to management in many ways. Both leadership and
management involve in influencing people. Leadership is concerned with
effective goal accomplishment, and so is management. In general, many of the
functions of management are consistent with the definition of leadership. But
leadership is also different from management whereas management was created as
a way to reduce discrepancies in organizations, to make them run more effectively and
efficiently. Function of management is to provide order and consistency to
organizations, whereas the primary function of leadership is to produce change
and movement (Peter, 2016). Management is about involving accordance with rules
and regulations of the organizational and leadership is about seeking adaptive
and constructive change.
According to
Peter, (2016), If an organization has strong leadership without management, the
outcome would be meaningless or misdirected. To be an effective organization,
it should nourish both competent management and skilled leadership. When
managers are involved in influencing a group to meet its goals, they are
involved in leadership. When leaders are involved in planning, organizing,
staffing, and controlling, they are involved in management. Both processes
involve influencing a group of individuals toward achieving goal and objectives
of an organization.
References :
- Azhar, A., Ikram, S., Rashid, S. and Saqib, S. (2012) ‘The Role of Leadership in Strategy Formulation and Implementation’, International Journal of Management & Organizational Studies, vol. 1.
- Jabbar, A. and Hussein, M. (2017) ‘The Role Of Leadership In Strategic Management’, International Journal of Research - Granthaalayah, Malaysia 5(5), pp. 99-106.
- Kotter, J. (2001) ‘What Leaders Really Do’, Harvard Business Reviews, pp. 3-4.
- Peter, N. (2016) ‘Leadership theory and practice’, 7th edn, SAGE Publications, United States of America, pp. 1-14.
