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Leading vs
Leading vs. Managing
In American Sign Language (ASL), the sign for managing is holding your hands out like holding onto the reins of a horse, or restraining something. The ASL for leading is to form a cradle with your arms and rock them back and forth the way a parent would nurture a child. Leadership and management are complementary systems, each with its own function and characteristic activities. Both are necessary for success in our changing and complex world.
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Leadership involves: |
Management involves: |
- Focus on people.
- Coping with change
(producing useful change in a competitive environment).
- Asks what and why.
- Being opportunity-oriented.
- Setting direction.
- Aligning people.
- Motivating/inspiring.
- Does the right thing.
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- Focus on systems and structure.
- Coping with complexity (bringing order and consistency to key organization areas).
- Asks how and when.
- Being problem-oriented.
- Planning and budgeting.
- Organizing/staffing.
- Control/problem solving.
- Does things right.
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Both Require:
-Deciding what needs to be done.
-Creating networks of people and relationships to accomplish the job.
-Ensuring people actually do the job.
-See "What Leaders Really Do," by John P. Kotter, Harvard Business Review, May-June, 1990.
-See "Learning to Lead" by Warren Bennis and Joan Goldsmith, 1994.
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