Leadership has to do with creating a vision for the future, rallying people and resources towards the attainment of said vision (Quinn, 2010; p.52). Management involves the activities of planning, setting strategy, organizing resources and coordinating events and said resources towards the achievement of set goals and objectives (Quinn, 2010; p.12). Obviously, goal and objective execution is the means for realizing a vision and this summarily is the set-up for the differences between leadership and management. The discussion below will explore the differences between these two concepts in relation to the questions asked.
DISCUSSION
Consider the metaphor used in the article differentiating managerial and leadership roles (average managers play checkers, great managers play chess and great leaders rally people toward a better future). Does it adequately describe and differentiate these roles? Why or why not?
From the essay Buckingham (2005), I deduce that a good manager manages while a great manager both leads and manages. The metaphorical allusion to checkers and chess as differentiation between leadership and managerial roles is adequate for a number of reasons:
Flexibility: Between the time when a vision is conceptualized to when it is achieved, a lot can change and since change is the substance of life itself, the making of a great manager requires adjusting (or altogether changing) strategy in pursuance of the company vision. To do this effectively, the great manager keeps the vision in focus at all times, setting goals and objectives that tie into the vision while adapting the approach in the executing of these goals and objectives as the situation demands. In the Buckingham (2005) article, for example, Michelle Miller was given a set of human resources to work with to achieve a vision of Walgreen’s becoming a destination for great customer experience. She identifies by the observation that her team is made of different personality traits which can be harnessed towards assigning the right roles for achieving set goals and objectives and consequently, the overall vision. The alternative would be to carve out rigid roles and demand that employees conform to them regardless of their personality traits that reflect their strengths and weaknesses.
Time: Obviously, it takes more time to achieve a vision that it takes to attain the component objectives and goals that lead to attaining the said vision. It is axiomatic that the longer time is allowed to pass the greater the number of change events will occur within that time. It has been said that leadership is the management of change (Quinn & Quinn, 2016). To extrapolate, leadership is the management of time events. To be a great manager, the leader in the manager must be prepared to taking the long-haul approach to solving problems instead of depending on quick fixes. It is also true that when dealing with people in change management the long-haul approach by its very definition requires more time, stricter attention to detail and persistence. Michelle Miller made time her ally and studied to find out Genoa was the analytical kind and so she needed to be furnished with consistently large volumes of information to plan and execute effectively (Buckingham, 2005). The alternative was to immediately write-off Genoa as over-bearing and find a more amenable person – a quick fix approach.
Focus on individuality/personality traits: The American Psychological Association (APA, 2017) defines personality as “individual differences in characteristic patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving.” The Personality Project puts it this way: “the coherent pattern of effect, cognition, and desires (goals) as they lead to behavior” (Revelle, 2016). The five traits identified and used in psychometric studies are extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience (Dingfelder, 2013). By far these are the most predictive of personality and it would be unwise to ignore them. A great manager like Michelle Miller focused on these traits in her employees and harnessed them towards achieving Walgreen’s vision (e.g. Jeffrey was conscientious, introverted and open to new experiences; Genoa was conscientious, extroverted but will not be open to a new experience if she has analyzed if for long).
Chess requires studying the personalities of the different pieces (i.e. queen, king, bishop, castle, etc.) to understand how they operate. This brings a lot of flexibility to chess (as opposed to checkers pieces which move the same way). This flexibility means there are multiple change events possible and to manage these effectively requires time which chess requires more than checkers. So Buckingham (2005) was right.
Do you think that the same set of qualities required for a manager are also needed for project managers? Why or why not?
According to James (2011; p.35), projects are “unique one-time operations designed to accomplish a specific set of objectives in a limited time frame.” The key difference between general management and project management is thus, the time constraint and the focus/specificity. According to Quinn (2010; p.14), a manager needs conceptual skills – the ability to visualize a vision of the future through abstraction, technical skills (or expertise) and human relational skills. For roles, Henry Mintzberg asserts that the manager must play the informational (monitor, disseminator, spokesperson), interpersonal (figurehead, leader, liaison) and decisional (disturbance handler, resource allocator, entrepreneur, and negotiator) roles to be effective (Quinn, 2010; p.15). All these qualities are needed by the general manager and project manager but the extents and degrees to which they can be applied will differ.
For example, a manager executing a two-month project to supply jet fighters for the US military that is about to be deployed for an imminent war has less time to play the human relational roles as opposed to Michelle Miller who is just managing the day-to-day of a company that is not constrained by time, broadly speaking. Projects managers are more likely to focus on technical skills. Conceptualizing the project would usually be done before it begins whereas for Michelle Miller concepts could be revised more frequently as the situation requires. Revising concepts more than a couple of times during a time-bound project could be the very thing that causes the project to fail.
CONCLUSION
Often times, management must be tailored to take advantage of resources available instead of the other way round. However, in executing a time-bound project, for example, tailoring the resources to suit management could be the better approach.
REFERENCES
Buckingham, M. (2005). What great managers do. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from: https://www.scribd.com/document/338767824/Buckingham-What-Great-Managers-Do-by-by-Marcus-Buckingham
Dingfelder, S. (2013). New study throws into doubt the universality of the ‘Big Five' American Psychological Association 44(3), 10. Retrieved from: https://www.apa.org/monitor/2013/03/big-five.aspx
James, T. (2011). Operations Strategy. Bookboon.com. Retrieved from: https://my.uopeople.edu/pluginfile.php/358620/mod_page/content/9/BUS5116James.pdf
Quinn, R.W. & Quinn, R.E. (2016, January 07). Change Management and Leadership Development Have to Mesh Harvard Business Review Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2016/01/change-management-and-leadership-development-have-to-mesh
Quinn, S. (2010). Management Basics. Bookboon.com. Retrieved from: https://my.uopeople.edu/pluginfile.php/358620/mod_page/content/9/BUS5116Quinn.pdf
Revelle, W. (2016). Hans Eysenck: Personality Theorist. Personality and Individual Differences. 103, 32-39 DOI: `0.1016/j. paid. 2016.04.007
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