Definitions of management and leadership
Often no distinction is made between management and leadership. They can be said to be parts of the same role. But others argue that managers and leaders have different characteristics and while managers may lead, leaders have other specific features.
A great deal of research has been done in the field and we will look at the work of several management theorists briefly below. You can do your own research to find out more. Click on the management style to see a short description.
Management by Objectives (MBO)
Situational and Contingency Management
In the Situational Management Model by Blanchard and Hersey, they proposed there is no leadership style that is better than another and that leaders should adapt their style to suit the skills of their employees and to the situation.
Situational Management Model by Blanchard and Hersey
On the other hand, in Fiedler’s work on Contingency Theory, he suggests that leadership style is fixed and therefore, the best leader should be chosen for the task at hand. He argues that there is no such thing as a bad leader, just a leader in the wrong position.
Functional and Action centred
The idea of focusing on functions and actions was developed by John Adair. Adair described leadership by describing the tasks that leaders do and the actions they have to complete.
His model included overlapping functions as pictured:
Adair’s model proposes that the task, team and individual needs must be considered continually at any level of management.
Transactional and Transformational Leadership
Transactional leadership is all about tasks. The leader will set tasks and performance expectations and employees will need to meet those objectives. It is a leadership style that uses rewards and punishments to motivate and instruct subordinates. It may be effective with some workers but is unlikely to make employees put in more effort than they have to.
Transformational managers are keen to develop their staff and try to motivate them to do more or go further. Steve Jobs is an example of a transformational leader.
Watch Steve Jobs talk about people management in the following video:
The concept of a leadership continuum for managerial behaviour
Robert Tannenbaum and Warren H. Schmidt proposed a model of a leadership continuum in 1958.
On one side is a leader who makes all decisions without input from others in the team.
At the other end lies a democratic leader who gives the workers a lot of responsibility to provide input and participate in the decision-making process.
Between the two poles, they proposed a number of other levels of leadership on a continuum – depending on the amount of input from the employees and the leader.
