Author: Vladimir Gadzhievich Aliev, head of the educational and methodological association of Russian universities for education in the field of management.
There is a difference between formal leadership—where influence comes from an official position in an organization—and natural leadership—where influence comes from others' recognition of the leader's personal superiority. In most situations, of course, these two types of influence are intertwined to a greater or lesser extent. What matters here is not that the leader has the qualities of superiority, but that his followers believe that he has these qualities.
Leadership is a psychological characteristic of the behavior of individual group members, and leadership is a social characteristic of relationships in a group, primarily from the point of view of the distribution of management and subordination roles. Unlike leadership, leadership acts as a legal process regulated by society.
However, despite these differences, both the leader and the manager deal with the same type of problems associated with stimulating the organization's personnel, directing them to solve certain problems, and caring about the means by which these problems can be solved.
Leadership and management are two different concepts. Management focuses on getting people to do things right, while leadership focuses on getting people to do the right things.
Table 1. Matrix of basic strategies
| Management | Leadership |
| 1. The regulation of official relations of the group as a certain social organization is carried out | 1. The regulation of interpersonal relationships in the group is carried out |
| 2. Connected with the entire system of social relations and is an element of the macroenvironment | 2. Is an element of the macroenvironment (just like the small group itself) |
| 3. Purposeful process carried out under the control of various elements of the social structure | 3. Arises spontaneously |
| 4. The phenomenon is more stable | 4. The phenomenon is less stable and depends more on the mood of the group |
| 5. A more defined system of various sanctions | 5. Less defined system of various sanctions |
| 6. The decision-making process is much more complex and is mediated by many different circumstances and considerations that are not necessarily related to a given group | 6. Decisions are made directly on group activities |
| 7. The leader’s scope of action is broader because he represents a small group in a broader social system | 7. The leader's sphere of activity is mainly a small group |
A leader is a person who directs the work of others and is personally responsible for its results. A good manager brings order and consistency to the work being done. He builds his interaction with subordinates more on facts and within the framework of established goals.
A leader inspires people and inspires enthusiasm in employees, conveying to them his vision of the future and helping them adapt to the new and go through the stage of change.
Managers tend to take a passive position in relation to goals. Most often, out of necessity, they focus on goals set by someone else and practically do not use them to carry out changes. Leaders, on the other hand, set their own goals and use them to change people's attitudes.
The officially appointed head of the unit has advantages in gaining leadership positions in the group, so he is more likely than anyone else to become a leader. However, it must be remembered that being a leader does not automatically mean being considered a leader, since leadership is largely based on an informal basis.
In addition, the behavior of a formal leader depends on whether he strives to move higher up the career ladder or is satisfied with his current position and does not particularly strive for promotion. In the first case, the manager, identifying himself with larger groups of the organization rather than with a group of subordinates, may believe that emotional attachment to the work group can become a brake on his path.
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A leader's commitment to his group may conflict with his personal ambitions and be in conflict with his commitment to the organization's leadership team. In the second, he completely identifies himself with his subordinates and strives to do everything in his power to protect their interests.
Managers prefer order in their interactions with subordinates. They structure their relationships with them according to the roles that subordinates play in a programmed chain of events or in the formal process of making and implementing decisions. This is largely because managers see themselves as a specific part of the organization or as members of a special social institution.
Leaders select and retain people who understand and share their views and ideas, reflected in the leadership vision. Leaders consider the needs of employees, their perceived values, and the emotions that drive them. Leaders tend to use emotions and intuition and are always ready to evoke strong feelings such as love and hate in their followers. Leaders do not associate self-respect with belonging to a particular organization.
Managers ensure that their subordinates achieve their goals by monitoring their behavior and responding to every deviation from the plan. Leaders build their relationships with subordinates on trust, motivating and inspiring them. They lay trust at the core of group, collaborative work.
Using their professionalism, various abilities and skills, managers concentrate their efforts in the area of decision making. They try to narrow down the set of ways to solve the problem. Decisions are often made based on past experiences.
Leaders, on the other hand, make constant attempts to develop new and controversial solutions to a problem. Most importantly, once they have solved a problem, leaders take on the risk and burden of identifying new problems, especially when there are significant opportunities for corresponding rewards.
It is customary to distinguish between the concepts of leader and manager as informal and formal leaders, respectively. The process of influencing through abilities and skills or other resources needed by people is called informal leadership. In this case, influence comes from others' recognition of the leader's personal superiority. Formal leadership is the process of influencing people from the position of their position, official position in the organization.
A formal leader is supported by delegated formal authority and usually operates in a specific functional area assigned to him. An informal leader is promoted due to his ability to influence others and due to his business and personal qualities.
In practice, as a rule, there is no ideal observance of these two types of relationships in management. Research shows that a significant group of executives have many leadership qualities. However, the opposite option is less common in real life.
The basis for classifications of leadership styles or behavioral styles was provided by theories based on the behavioral approach. With the behavioral approach to leadership, effectiveness is determined not so much by the personal qualities of the leader, but by his manner of behavior towards subordinates. German psychologist Kurt Lewin (1890-1947) conducted a series of experiments, on the basis of which he identified three management styles that have become classic:
- authoritarian (or autocratic, or directive, or dictatorial);
- democratic (or collegial);
- permissive (or liberal-anarchist, or neutral).
The leader relates daily work to larger goals
In large companies, office workers sometimes feel like a cog in a huge machine. People do the same type of work, submit it by a certain deadline, without even knowing what the return is and what the result is. This is where the first difference between a leader and an ordinary manager appears. The head of the department relies on his subordinates to do the work well and deliver it on time. The average manager is convinced that his job is to properly regulate the elements of the mechanism, by which we mean ordinary employees. Therefore, he concentrates only on current tasks
A true leader always keeps the main goal in sight. He knows that all the boring and monotonous work is designed to ultimately achieve a good result. The leader makes sure that each employee knows about his own contribution to the common cause.
Implementation of the leadership process
It would not be superfluous to identify the tools with which the leadership process is carried out. First of all, this is power (formal and informal). The first option assumes the power that the manager is endowed with as standard, at the formal level. As for the second type, the leader has to conquer informal power on his own. This conquest is achieved through personal qualities, knowledge, skills, and so on. Let us also turn to how power is expressed. First of all, this is the ability of one (or several) individuals to influence the behavior and activities of others. Management methods are usually distinguished as follows:
- Administrative - this implies the use by the leader of his legal capabilities in order to influence a small group. There is only one way of interaction here - legal sanctions.
- Economic - everything is simple here, it is the material motivation of subordinates to work. Here the method of influence is obvious - financial or similar reward.
- Social-psychological is the influence of a leader on an individual through values, personal authority, and so on. The method of influence is the beliefs of a particular individual about something.
The latter method can only be used if the leader is simultaneously recognized as a leader by the small group.
A leader sees employees as people.
The head of the department has a place in his organization; he is convinced that a clear hierarchy has been created in order for movement up the career ladder to occur. A small boss will always dream of taking over a larger department. That is why the manager considers all his employees and subordinates exclusively from the point of view of their position.
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The leader is inclined to discard all conventions in communicating with subordinates, seeing ordinary employees, first of all, as people. He is interested in the affairs of his employees, their dreams and aspirations, and builds his communication on trust. Such casual communication helps the leader to get to know his subordinates well in order to more successfully use the strengths and weaknesses of employees in the future.
Concept and features of leadership
Leadership is a complex, multidimensional category.
In a general sense, it is usually understood as the position of a certain individual in a group, which gives the person occupying it the opportunity to influence individual people, directing their efforts in the right direction. In the field of management and management, leadership is understood as the ability of an individual to form a team and lead it to its intended goals on the basis of personal authority. Definition 1
A leader is a person who motivates his followers to achieve their goals and makes every effort to achieve this.
The phenomenon of leadership itself has a dual nature. On the one hand, it is based on the sphere of relations, and on the other, on the business sphere (Figure 1). Together they form two types of leadership:
- informal leadership;
- formal leadership.
Figure 1. Areas of leadership in an organization. Author24 - online exchange of student work
Both areas of leadership are inseparable from each other, as are the socio-economic and organizational and technical aspects of management.
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Formal leadership is more associated with the concept of management. Informal leadership is determined by personal and situational factors.
A leader does not take credit for the achievements of others
A manager is the same employee in the company, he has his own goals and motives. In the same way, he comes to his boss with a report on the work done. And if one of the ordinary workers has achieved a good result or come up with a brilliant idea, there is a great temptation to take credit for it. If the entire department worked well, the manager will take the opportunity to once again show what a brilliant boss he is.
The leader will always find warm words for each of his employees and emphasize that achieving a goal is, first of all, a collective success. He enjoys the successes of his subordinates, because he knows that the more successful people around, the better for the team.
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1.1. Authoritarian management style
It is characterized by strict individual decision-making by the manager (“minimum democracy”), strict constant control over the implementation of decisions with the threat of punishment (“maximum control”), and a lack of interest in the employee as an individual. Employees must only do what they are told to do. At the same time, they receive a minimum of information. The interests of employees are not taken into account.
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Due to constant control, this management style provides quite acceptable work results according to non-psychological criteria: profit, productivity, product quality can be good.
However, there are more disadvantages than advantages:
- high probability of erroneous decisions;
- suppression of initiative, creativity of subordinates, slowdown of innovations, stagnation, passivity of employees;
- people's dissatisfaction with their work, their position in the team;
- an unfavorable psychological climate (“sycophants”, “scapegoats”, intrigues) causes increased psychological stress and is harmful to mental and physical health.
The authoritarian style underlies the vast majority of conflicts due to the manager’s desire for autocracy. This management style is appropriate and justified only in critical situations (accidents, military operations, etc.)
The leader takes responsibility
It is extremely important to be able to take responsibility for failure, even if the mistakes were made by ordinary employees. A leader will never blame any of his team members. After all, he understands that he needed to teach his subordinate to do his job correctly. The leader perceives the mistakes of one of the group members as a problem in the functioning of the system, and, as is known, the master is required to debug the system.
The ordinary boss finds the source of the error and punishes the person who made the mistake.
1.3. Permissive management style
It is characterized, on the one hand, by a “maximum of democracy” (everyone can express their positions, but they do not strive to achieve real accounting or agreement on positions), and on the other hand, by a “minimum of control” (even the decisions made are not implemented, there is no control over their implementation, everything left to chance).
This management style is characterized by lack of initiative and non-interference in the process of certain works. As a result:
- performance results are usually low;
- people are not satisfied with their work, their leader, the psychological climate in the team is unfavorable;
- there is no cooperation;
- there is no incentive to work conscientiously;
- sections of work consist of individual interests of leaders;
- subgroups; hidden and obvious conflicts are possible;
- there is a stratification into conflicting subgroups.
There may be a discrepancy between the form and content of the manager’s actions, for example, outwardly a form of democratic style is used (demonstration of external disposition, politeness to subordinates, discussion of the problem is held), but in reality the decision by the manager has long been made individually (disguising an authoritarian leader as a “democratic”).
The leader's style is flexible, individual and situational. He must master all three styles and skillfully apply them depending on the specific situation, the specifics of the tasks being solved, the socio-psychological characteristics of employees and his own personal qualities.
The study of personal psychological qualities that determine the success of leadership made it possible to identify the following necessary qualities and personality traits:
- dominance - the ability to influence subordinates;
- self confidence;
- emotional balance and stress resistance - the ability of a leader to control his emotional manifestations, self-regulate his emotional state, exercise self-government and optimal emotional release;
- creativity, ability to creatively solve problems, high practical intelligence;
- desire to achieve goals and entrepreneurship, the ability to take risks - reasonable, not adventurous, willingness to take responsibility in solving problems;
- responsibility and reliability in completing tasks, honesty, fidelity to the given promise and guarantees;
- independence, independence in decision making;
- flexibility of behavior in changing situations;
- sociability, ability to communicate, interact with people.
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Having clear personal values and reasonable personal goals as a leader is critical to success in business, career, and personal life.
At one time, Henry Mintzberg named eight basic qualities that a leader should have:
- The art of being equal, i.e. establish and maintain a system of relationships with equal people.
- The art of being a leader is the ability to lead subordinates, to cope with all the difficulties and problems that come to a person along with power and responsibility.
- The art of conflict resolution is the ability to act as a mediator between two parties to a conflict, to resolve troubles caused by psychological stress.
- The art of information processing is the ability to build a communication system in an organization, obtain reliable information and evaluate it effectively.
- The art of making innovative management decisions is the ability to find problems and solutions in conditions where alternative courses of action, information and goals are unclear or doubtful.
- The art of allocating resources in an organization is the ability to choose the right alternative, find the best option in conditions of limited time and lack of other types of resources.
- The gift of an entrepreneur is the ability to take justifiable risks and introduce innovations into an organization.
- The art of self-analysis is the ability to understand the position of the leader and his role in the organization, the ability to see the impact the leader has on the organization.
M. Woodcock, D. Francis, considering the qualities of a leader necessary for successful work and effective management of a work group, identified typical weak and high leadership skills (Table 2).
At the same time, the leader must understand the importance of developing effective leadership skills.
Table 2. Weak and high leadership skills
| Weak leadership skills | High leadership skills |
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A leader cares about the process, not the result.
What is more important, the process or the result? An ordinary manager will immediately say that nothing but the result matters. This is why the manager is so scrupulous when it comes to deadlines or the exact implementation of instructions.
However, if we look at the process in more depth, the importance of thorough fundamental work becomes obvious. Therefore, a leader always looks deeper; he understands that the result is only a manifestation of diligence and hard work.
