Respond to the questions below by Wednesday and respond to at least two others by Friday.
Perhaps the greatest separation between management and leadership is that leaders do not have to hold a management position. That is, a person can become a leader without a formal title. Any individual can become a leader because the basis of leadership is on the personal qualities of the leader. People are willing to follow the leader because of who he or she is and what the leader stands for, not because they have to due to the authority bestowed onto him or her by the organization. The leader will show passion and personal investment in the success of his or her followers reaching their goals, which may be different from organizational goals.
A leader has no formal, tangible power over their followers. Power is awarded to the leader on a temporary basis and is contingent upon the leader's ability to continue to motivate and inspire followership. Notice the shift in terminology here: managers have subordinates, while leaders have followers. Subordinates do not have a choice but to listen to the demands and wishes of their managers, but following is (and always will be) a voluntary choice for those who follow a leader. Those who no longer wish to follow the leader will simply stop. That is, if an employee initially sees his or her manager as a leader and eventually ceases to be inspired by that manager, the employee will still obey the manager, but only because the employee is required to do so, not because he or she wants to.
Leadership is about effectiveness through trust, inspiration and people. Leaders often challenge the status quo that managers spend much of their time upholding to bring innovation to organizations. Leadership is visionary, change-savvy, creative, agile and adaptive. Managers are concerned with the bottom line, while leaders spend time looking at the horizon.
Einstein: When asked to save the world in one hour... Einstein said the first 55 minutes should be spent defining the problem and last 5 minutes solving it!
- Why is problem solving such a challenge?
- Choose USM or another organization that you are familiar with and discuss in terms of the material in the text (pp. 196 - 207).