By Valeria Montero Loaiza - – Student of Business Administration

Being a manager is a skill or occupation that can be learned through advanced studying in order to make a living in the business world, therefore it’s more of an acquired skill that is thought. Nonetheless, like every occupation, it comes more naturally to some than others. When it comes to what is needed in order to become a manager, the logical answer that comes up in most people’s heads immediately is by studying and obtaining a degree in some sort of business career to learn precisely how to do it, yet what is the value of a degree when the person whose name is written on it uniquely completes their job by following step by step what the books they read to fulfill the assignments said, that would be a perhaps wary yet monotonous worker that struggles to make some sort of mark. Thereby, the best kind of manager is the one that simultaneously is also a leader.

The terms “manager” and “leader” often can be categorized as having the same meaning given that when you think of a manager you think of the person leading the group. At a restaurant when there is an issue usually instead of taking it out with the server whose job is to simply take clients orders and serve it to them, people call for the manager because that person is in charge of being the head of the staff. However, usually in the business world some significant set of differences are tabbed between the two. Starting off with the manner that each characteristically handles the group that they oversee. Whilst leaders have fans, managers have employees (Arruda, 2019), signifying that a leader will create relationships with the people their working with to get the job done creating a loyalty spectrum causing for whatever job their trying to complete to create a mark which resembles them and their work. Instead, managers create more of a system which simply tells a plan that has a goal, element which also goes out to the clients or bosses.

Furthermore, in coherence with the previous difference in which we can identify that a leader plays more by the social and people facet of the job, a manager does it but in more of a technical style. Thus, leaders create more of a vision, and managers create goals (Arruda, 2019). This implication signifies that when a leader focuses more on the bigger perspective that allows to engage everyone into the idea, a manager measures and controls so that the goal can be reached.

Moreover, as a counterargument it can be told that the best type of manager is simply those prepared enough with proper knowledge of managerial skills, that all of the leadership talk uniquely benefits the person in thus position. What it is true about this different perspective is that being a leader either because it comes natural to a person or because it was an adaptation, does not mean it will make a great manager. Great managers do need those knowledgeable managerial skills such as planning, decision making, delegation and communication. In spite of that, those skills are not the only thing needed to become or be a great manager. The additional leadership skills such as transcendence, courage and impulse are what will potentially provoke that sense of greatness in a manager, making for a perfect manager attitude.

Conclusively, leadership is one of those skills needed for a manager to flourish. To succeed at either one or at both there has to be consciousness of what different but connected skills each position requires (Harvard Business Review, 2015). Due to the fact that to some degree it’s one of those skills required to succeed as a manager, at circumstantial situations it plays out to be as a different mindset, but with a balance between the two where both are taken into consideration, it results in the ideal one.

 

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References:
  • Arruda, W. (2019, February 26). 9 Differences Between Being A Leader And A Manager. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamarruda/2016/11/15/9-differences-between-being-a-leader-and-a-manager/?sh=24e1ccfd4609
  • Harvard Business Review. (2015, August 14). What Great Managers Do. https://hbr.org/2005/03/what-great-managers-do