admincomes to mind is the late North Korean Great Leader Kim II Sung who, we are told, had such a profound impact on his nation that his personal characteristics were taught throughout the educational system.
So impactful was he that citizens were requested to wear a pin/badge of his image. His death was declared a national tragedy, and hundred of thousands were seen crying at his funeral.
Such was the aura that the Great Leader carried — the state was thrown into three years of national mourning.
Throughout history, there has been many great leaders. There have been both men and women who have done away with social conformity and gone on to accomplish amazing things.
Leaders are few and far between but when they come, people do follow. Topping the list of great leaders in history is Hitler.
Despite being the creator of the Nazi party, Hitler was a captivating leader.
This is not to say that he was a good person because most people would certainly agree that he was not.
However, when it came to leading Germany’s military into forging mass genocide, he succeeded.
Through his charisma and wit, he managed to brainwash millions of people into believing that it was the Jews fault for all of their country’s problems.
While he has done terrible things, he is one of the greatest leaders in history in terms of leading people.
Abraham Lincoln, commonly referred to as “Honest Abe”, was the 16th president of the United States.
During his time as the country’s leader, he had one great struggle to deal with — leading people through the Civil War. He managed to preserve the union and keep the United States from developing into two separate countries.
Lincoln also abolished slavery by signing the Emancipation Proclamation.
Everything he did was for the good of the people and not only is he considered the greatest American president ever, he is considered the greatest leader in history by most people’s standards.
And so we also have great managers that are voted on a day to day basis. I say this as an opinion and with the pride it deserves, but Manchester United’s Sir Alex Ferguson is titled to be the greatest managers of the game’s history.
John P. Kotter in a Harvard Business Review Publication reiterated that leadership is different from management, but not for the reasons most people think.
He says that leadership is not “mystical and mysterious. It has nothing to do with having charisma or other special personality traits. It’s not the province of a chosen few. Nor is leadership necessarily better than management or a replacement for it. Rather, leadership and management are two distinctive and complementary systems of action”.
Kotter further argues that both are necessary for success in today’s business environment.
He says that management is about coping with complexity. Its practices and procedures are, for the most part, responses to the emergence of large, complex organisations in the 20th century. “Leadership, by contrast, is about coping with change”
Is it not amazing that he observes that most corporations today are over Managed and under-led “They need to develop their capacity to exercise leadership. Successful corporations do not wait for leaders to come along. They actively seek out people with leadership potential and expose them to career experiences designed to develop that potential.
“While improving their ability to lead, companies should remember that strong leadership with weak management is no better. The real challenge is to combine strong leadership and strong management and use each to balance the other.”
Whichever way you see it, the basic appreciation is that leadership has a way of setting a new direction or vision for a group that they follow.
Management tends to control or direct people and/or resources according to principles, values or vision that have already been established.
According to Bob Selden, author of “What to Do When You Become the Boss” for a manager to be considered a leader there should be:
- A shared understanding of the environment — “We know what we face”
- A shared vision of where we are going — “We know what we have to do”
- A shared set of organisational values — “We are in this together”
- A shared feeling of power — “We can do this”
Closer home, we have men and women that have literally pulled thousands and filled stadiums.
These lead huge crowds and impact people’s lives in different directions.
Whichever way you look at it, the choice of the best leaders and managers are purely opinionistic.
What I know and believe is that each one has the potential to be either one or both of them.
Till next week, May God richly bless you,
Shelter Chieza is an advisor in management issues. She can be contacted at [email protected]
Online Reporter