Leadership or Managership: A Paradox in Management?

Abstract

Do we need more leaders or managers? Should a leader or a manager run the company? Who is more critical – manager or leader – for the success of a business? Enigmatic questions wrapped in a riddle inside a conundrum. May be the word leader itself is mystical and occult and therefore cannot be grasped easily. Well, I think it is more mundane than all the hypes that surround it. Strangely, only at the top of a company we expect someone as leader otherwise we are satisfied with the so called managers at all other levels. Are leadership qualities required only at the top? Looking at the slew of publications on management particularly since 90's one easily gets the impression that it has been, overwhelmingly, in favour of "Leadership”. Contrastingly there are very few books, on how to become a good manager. Today, it seems we are engrossed with the idea that being a leader is the best way forward to create and lead an agile organisation. We differentiate: a manager strives for stability and a leader instils change and instigates renewal. The mania for Leadership has overshadowed the fact that managing a business requires leadership at all management levels in an organisation, perhaps the difference is that at lower levels there is a need for transaction leadership where as at higher levels and specifically at the top it requires more transformational leadership.