Leadership and Organizational Success
Introduction
Leadership has been defined as the process of describing a vision and influencing others to accomplish a mission or assignment (Borkowski, 2009). Being able to adapt and grow is an important component of good leadership because organizations are living entities in the sense that they change and grow over time. This means that leaders have to constantly match the right style of leadership to the present needs of the organization in order to guide it to the next level of development (Laureate Education, Inc., 2009). The merger of BRMC and PRMC called for a particular style of leadership in order to merge the two distinct cultures present at each organization (Buchbinder & Shanks, 2012). The following outline will explore different aspects of leadership and apply those aspects to needs arising from this merger.
Distinction between leadership and management
Managers
• Direct the work of employees and devise systems to monitor employees’ progress toward achieving preset goals
• Determine how to achieve preset goals and are responsible for achieving them
• Tell employees to accomplish a particular task or objective
• Handle activities through planning and budgeting
• Achieve their goals by organizing and staffing
• Create an organizational structure and sets of jobs for accomplishing the organization’s strategies
(Borkowski, 2009, p.172)
Leaders
• Set direction or mission for the organization
• Motivate the organization and stakeholders
• Are effective spokesmen for the organization
• Focus on long term goals of the organization (Romero 2010)
• Interface with the external environment as face of the organization (Kotter 1996)
There is some overlap between the roles of managers and leaders and they both complement each other. But the distinction between their roles is that whereas a manager points