Leadership Can Be Distinguished From Management by Its Use of Critical Thinking
Introduction
Industrialists and academic professionals have, for a long time, attempted to distinguish between management and leadership. In the recent past, the world witnessed most of its business organizations shifting their focus definitely to leadership, from management due to heightened need to sustain growth as a result of rapid changes in the highly competitive industrial landscape (Astington, 2003). While it has been clearly pointed out that there exists a difference between leadership and management, debate still rages concerning the inherent overlap between these two significant organizational elements with regard to how they drive the business. In most cases, they are said to form part of a similar role as most business leadership as well as management roles involve a mix of both leadership and management. This is because they closely intertwine between continual changes in organizations’ direction and the control of resources towards that direction which refer to leadership and management respectively (Heibrunn, 1994).
In a nutshell, leadership refers to the process of influencing other people or an organization towards obtaining some common goals. This involves the setting of a new vision or a new direction for a group to follow and it calls for creativity, innovation as well critical thinking on the part of the leader (Astington, 2003). Management, on the other hand, merely refers to the process of exercising certain control actions on the group or the group’s resources with an aim of moving the group to a set direction or in order to achieve set objectives. This is also done on the basis of already established values and principles of the organization (Heibrunn, 1994). Hence, it is clear that while leadership sets the direction, management works towards the set directions and critical as well as creative thinking are key aspects of leadership. This essay explores the concept of leadership and management on the basis of the fact that leadership can be distinguished from management by its use of critical thinking.
The Concept of Leadership and Leadership Theories
As already stated earlier, leadership is the process of exercising some influence over an organization towards achieving certain organizational goals. From this definition, it should be noted that leadership is a process of social influence since it involves a leader and his/her follower(s). It should also be noted that unlike other forms of authoritative influence, leadership prompts voluntary actions from subjects. Finally, this definition emphasizes the fact that leadership elicits a powerful behavior, amongst followers, that is oriented towards common organizational goals (Stogdill, Ralph & Bernard, 1974). Leadership often involves the creation of a new vision or changing the course of direction of an organization. This may be in the form of discovering new methods of doing business, packaging, manufacturing and marketing as well as the discovery of new markets or introduction of new products which may completely revitalize the operations of an organization. The leader is therefore seen as a change agent, an innovator or an initiator of newness in his/her organization (Bass et al, 2003).
Studies on leadership development can be traced briefly by look at the various leadership theories over time. The first leadership theory which was widely studied around the 1930s was the Trait Theory. This theory was based on the provision that leaders had certain individual features that were distinct from non-leaders. According to the Trait Theory, leaders are not made, but are born with these unique characteristics. However, due to failure by empirical studies to consistently link leadership with personal traits, this theory was abandoned around the 1950s (Kirkpatrick, 1991). Subsequent leadership development studies then focused on the second leadership theory, the Behavioral Theories which became popular around the 1940s to 1950s. This theory postulated that effective leaders behaved in a completely different manner from non-leaders. It identified two broad categories of leader behavior namely, task-oriented and relationship-oriented behavior (Greenberg, Jerald & Robert, 2000). However, again due to failure to link this theory to leadership effectiveness, the theory diminished shortly thereafter.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Contingency Theories came up to dominate leadership development studies. Unlike the Trait and the Behavior theories, this theory took into consideration the various situational factors that influence leadership effectiveness by determining the specific characteristics and behaviors of leaders under favorable and unfavorable conditions (Greenberg, Jerald & Robert, 2000). This theory postulated that the major contingency factor that affected the choice of leadership style by leaders was their subordinate’s maturity relating to their tasks. This is the subordinates’ ability to take responsibility for their work-related behavior. However, this theory received sharp criticism on theoretical as well as methodological grounds even though it continues to be among the better known contingency leadership theories and provides a clear picture of the interplay between leadership style and subordinate maturity/ability (Kirkpatrick, 1991).
The trait theory, behavioral theory and the contingency theory played an important role in understanding the concept of leadership. However, they failed to satisfactorily explain leadership as well as leadership effectiveness (Bass et al, 2003). As a result, in the subsequent years, several other theories were put forward to foster leadership development studies. One such theory was the theory of leader-member exchange which was developed in the 1970s. This theory noted that leaders were fond of developing high quality working relationships with a cross section of their subordinates but not some others. According to this theory, several organizational outcomes were influenced by the quality of the inherent working relationships cultivated between management and their subordinates within the organization. As such, this theory promoted good working relations among workers at different levels in the organizational hierarchy (Graen, George and William, 1978).
The 1970s and the 1980s also saw the development of the Charismatic Leadership Theory which suggested that subordinate staff were inspired by their effective leaders to get personally committed towards organizational goals and objectives. This is by the leaders’ display of charismatic behavior, communication of organizational vision and mission as well as acting as a powerful living example to the junior staff (Bass et al, 2003). Thereafter, there came the theory of Substitute for leadership which suggested that the impacts of effective leadership could be substituted or even negated by the characteristics of the subordinate staff, organizational tasks or the organization. Finally, around the same period of the 1970s, leadership studies were guided by the theory of servant leadership which is based on the philosophy of leaders being servants in the first place by placing their subordinates’, customers’ and community’s interests above their own personal interests (Podsakoff et al,1993).
Critical Thinking
As stated in the previous sections, leadership involved the transformation of an organization by giving it a new vision or changing the direction of its operations. Therefore, the leader is an agent of change in an organization. In order to institute such changes, there are various qualities that leaders should exhibit. One important quality for effective leadership is the ability of the leader to think critically and creatively (Regelski, 2005). The leader is an agent of innovation in an organization. They formulate new policies, identify new markets, devise new products, invent new methods of packaging, and discover new marketing strategies as well as new workers for the organization. Therefore, in the current wave of an increasingly competitive business landscape, organizational leaders must be very swift, creative and innovative if their organizations must maintain a comparative advantage over others. Failure to do this, an organization may easily be out-competed by its creative and innovative rivals (Regelski, 2005).
Before we go any farther, it is important to consider the meaning of critical thinking. Critical thinking refers to the ability of an individual to verify assumptions using some reliable as well as verifiable facts. This means that a person who thinks critically does not take his/hers/others assumptions with a literal value but goes ahead to confirm and verify the same before using or passing them over (Regelski, 2005). Critical thinking is closely related to the concept of creative thinking which, on the other hand, refers to the ability of a person to expand his/her ideas by gathering information that already exists but was initially thought not to contain any significant meaning (John et al, 2008). In order to run successful businesses in the 21st century, there is an ever increasing trend in the need for business leaders to become critical thinkers. A great pool of critical thinkers in the business environment will promote creativity and innovation in the sector that is needed for growth of enterprises in the changing world economy (Regelski, 2005).
In his book, John Baldoni (2012) lists four major things that one needs to do in order to develop a sense of critical thinking. The first and the fundamental thing are to constantly question assumptions. Critical thinking must be associated with high levels of inquisitiveness and the relentless desire to verify every proposition. This was greatly evident during the recent financial crisis in the United States of America and the entire world in 2008 whereby organizations critically thought of their ways out of the crisis as well as the possible adjustments that could save their businesses from collapsing in the face of the world financial downturn. Luxury brands such as Louis Vuitton have since come up with innovative pricing and restricted supply and availability strategies that make their brands immune to such financial crises. From the foregoing, it can be seen that crisis can play an important role in bringing out the best of business leaders critical thinking as they are compelled to question why and how they got themselves into the crisis and how best they can quickly come out (Stephen, 1987).
The second thing to do in the process of developing critical thinking ability is the adoption of different perspectives. Today, the world’s management landscape presents a wide range of business cultures and genders. Business leaders should take advantage of this provision to change their historical perspectives of various management issues in their organizations (John, 2012). In addition, the world today has been reduced to a small global village with vast technologies and tools for business information exchange and sharing. This presents an opportunity for enterprise leaders to access a wide range of materials and experiences that are useful to changing their traditional ways of doing business in order to fit in the rapidly changing world market and keep up with the increasing competition (Stephen, 1987). For instance, an African trained engineer may not have the same perspective of a problem as one trained in New York. However, the world now provides an opportunity for the two engineers to harmonize their perceptions and improve their ways of doing things in light of available information (John, 2012).
Thirdly, critical thinkers must always see the potential of every situation and seek to explore such potential. Harnessing numerous perspectives and verifying assumptions are just but primary methods towards achieving this end. Critically thinking leaders must also have a bent of creativity that will open their eyes to opportunities even in areas where other leaders only sight obstacles and hurdles (John, 2012). For instance, while one executive director of a company may see a snag of his/her brands as a problem, a critically thinking executive director of another company would see it an opportunity to develop something new that will attract consumers in the market over other competing products. As such, every situation comes with opportunities that must be clearly identified, evaluated and explored (Stephen, 1987). Every challenge/obstacle on the way must be turned into a stepping stone to overcome the same challenge and open access to more and more opportunities ahead. This will obviously give a given organization and comparative competitive advantage over its rivals who take time to grieve of obstacles.
The final critical thinking aspect that is very important to modern business leaders is to learn how to manage ambiguity. It may never be possible for business managers to know and understand all the variables that interplay in the organization. This is because the business environment, as it exists today, brings together a wide range of global factors as well as complex supply chains that in turn, make the entire business environment so complex. This explains the need for business leaders to be flexible enough and operate in such an environment as can constantly change with corresponding changes in the global environment. Rapid decisions may often be required to keep up with changes and leaders must be equipped to make these decisions (John, 2012). The complex business environment may require business leaders to operate with some degree of uncertainty as pertains to certain factors and anticipated changes. Critical thinkers are needed who can manage the uncertainty and make quick innovative decisions in case of the uncertainties (Stephen, 1987).
Critical Thinking and Leadership
Leadership is all about making decisions. Effective leadership is about making relevant, right and timely decisions for enhancing effectiveness in the operations of an organization. Critical thinking is very important in leadership decision making as a process. First, it prevents leaders from making critical organizational decisions based on assumptions or assertions which may be wrong or erroneous. This will in turn prevent organizational failure as a result of decisions based on erroneous information (Catherine, 2011). With critical thinking, one challenges all assumptions and goes ahead to confirm them and establish the real facts. It is upon these real facts that the decision making process will be based. When decisions are made based on facts and reality, the organizations run in the right way and business activities of the organization are conducted in light rather than on the basis of presumed information that might make important decisions vulnerable to failure (DiMattia, 1993).
Critical thinking also enables business leaders to make the right decisions. This is enhanced by the fact that critical thinking helps decision makers to comprehend all the possible variables that play a role in the process and would have a significant impact on the operations of the organizations. As such, critical thinking provides leaders with solid and reliable evidence upon which decisions should be based. This can only help make valid and correct any decision made by such critically thinking leaders (Catherine, 2011). In addition, the leaders do a critical analysis of all the variables involved in a given process. This enhances their understanding of all the variables such that they are able to make informed and correct decisions. As a result, such organizations are likely to prosper more than their counterparts who still rely on assumption-based decisions with leaders with no sense or ability to think critically (DiMattia, 1993).
Finally, it important to note that critical thinking promotes creativity and innovation in an organization. This is in line with the leadership function of providing new vision and direction to the course of operations of an organization. In the current wave of increased globalization and trade liberalization, most organizations have seized the opportunity to enter the international market (Catherine, 2011). However, this has heightened the level of competitions among organizations both from local as well as foreign rivals. In order to compete favorably, business leaders in their respective organizations must devise new ways of making their products competitive as well as new methods of marketing and packaging their brands. This calls for utmost creativity and innovativeness, on the part of the decision makers of the organizations, in order to gain reasonable competitive advantage over their rivals (Stephen, 1987).
Leadership Development and Critical Thinking
In order for the youth to develop and become productive citizens of their countries, leadership development is fundamental. The youth ought to be trained on the various skills necessary for decision making and judgment on the basis of critical thinking (Ricketts & Rudd, 2003). In order to gain a full comprehension of the relationship between critical development and leadership development, let us consider a piece of research conducted by John C. Ricketts, an assistant professor at the University of Georgia who assessed skills of some selected youth leaders in their national FFA organization. The results of this study indicated, though low, but very positive links between critical thinking and leadership development. It was also noted that it may form an important part for teacher trainers as well as leaders who are involved in development of curriculum for their youth (Ricketts, 2005).
According to Ricketts (2005), there was a reasonable increase in each subset of skills with corresponding increase in individual levels of leadership training. This increase could be directly attributed to the component of workshops on leadership training which were carefully designed to foster critical thinking and subsequent skill development among the youth. For example, he found out that there are some topics conflict resolution and interpersonal relations that were tackled in the leadership training workshops by scenario-based learning activities that enabled the learners to develop a sense and ability of evaluating circumstances in a critical manner and thereby make very critical decisions (Kenneth et al, 2004). This relationship has also been pointed out by various other studies analyzing critical thinking with respect to leadership development. The connection is said to be natural and very necessary because it is very dangerous for leaders to engage in important decision making without critical thinking (Ricketts, 2005).
Ricketts further found out that that the students’ minds and the associated skills for critical thinking significantly increased with an increase in the number of leadership experiences that the students were exposed to. The students’ participation in organized competitions and contests was seen to be a primary factor in influencing their leadership experience and was thus a possible fostering factor for critical thinking. This is because the questions and activities involved in the organized contents required quick thinking and critical analysis that enhance the participants’ critical thinking ability (Ricketts, 2005). It was also observed that the students engaged in these leadership development activities and contests demonstrated an appreciable level of motivation and confidence that their counterparts who did not participate in the same. This is the kind of confidence and motivation that results from a clear comprehension of all the variables necessary for critical decision making (Kenneth et al, 2004).
The Concept of Management
Management is the process of organizing and coordinating of the operations of an organization with an aim of achieving some defined objectives. Management is considered as a key factor of production alongside the other resources required in an organization (Kristina, 2009). According to management experts, for a business, management would involve marketing as well as innovation in promoting the business. For organizations, in general, various management functions are listed as: Organization and formulation of corporate policies, planning of organizational operations, controlling the organization’s resources and directing the resources towards attainment of set policy objectives (Carol, 2006). Ideally, management, with no trace of leadership, means controlling an organization to maintain some form of status quo or ensuring organizational processes occurs according to some well established plans (Cords, 2007).
Unlike leadership, which entails setting new vision and direction for an organization, management if bestowed with the responsibility of making decisions and overseeing an enterprise (Carol, 2006). The size of an organization’s management depends on its size. While small organizations may be managed by a single individual, multinational companies have a number of managers based along different lines of operation of the enterprise. Some large organizations are managed by a board of directors who formulate policies that are then implemented by a CEO (Kristina, 2009). The management of an organization is very important in determining the present as well as the future worth of an organization. This is largely dependent on the quality, expertise and experience of the management team, who are guided by set principles, hence would perpetuate even with a change in organizations’ management (Carol, 2006).
As already stated earlier, there is a close interplay between management and leadership. Similarities between the two concepts are often based on the widespread use of both leadership and management in the context of organizations. As a matter of fact, both management and leadership play an effective role in the quest for an organization to achieve its goals and objectives. Both leaders and managers attempt to influence members of an organization towards achieving the organization’s goals (Stogdill & Bernard, 1974). These similarities may present some confusion in attempting to distinguish the two concepts. For instance, participative management can sometimes be seen as a perfect form of leadership. In such a case, the leader closely involves the group in the operations of the organization such that when a new form of direction is finally seen to emerge, it is actually seen to come from the group rather than from the leader. It would be important to note that the leader has played a leading role in initiating the change (Kristina, 2009).
However, similarities between leadership and management are only limited to the fact that they both involve influence towards certain goals (Lavinson, 2004). Otherwise, the differences between the two concepts can be clearly summarized in terms of their functions. On one hand, management functions can be broadly identified as planning function, organizing/staffing as well as controlling functions. This implies that managers are involved in planning operations of an organization by formulating agendas, setting timelines and by budgeting for the group. They are also responsible for organizing the group by providing an organizational structure as well as setting rules, regulations and procedures. Managers also control the organization by reviewing plans, performing corrective actions and designing incentive programs. This requires particular expertise and experience (Doug, 2009).
While management goes hand in hand with leadership, they are two different concepts. Unlike leadership, which involves innovation, management entails administration. The manager is considers as a copy of the original, the leaders of the company, since they do not implement their own ideas but maintain those developed by leaders (Lavinson, 2004). Managers often rely on control whereas leaders inspire trust in the organization. They often only view the enterprise on a short range view unlike leaders who are interested in the long-term perspective of the organization. Unlike leaders who change the status quo in an organization, managers tend to maintain the status quo as it exists in an organization (Doug, 2009).However, true leaders can provide management and true managers can also provide leadership, though this is not often the case in most cases hence the need to strike a balance between leadership and management (Lavinson, 2004).
Based on the functions of management discussed above, managers need to be well qualified in management theory and experience. This is largely dependent on their education/training as well as level of exposure to organizational activities in order to acquire the requisite experience and knowledge (Doug, 2009).This is the reason, today, most companies emphasize training for their managers with most of them now preferring to recruit fresh graduates and engage them through management trainee programs while exposing them to the organization’s operations. This is aimed at developing a pool of knowledgeable and experienced personnel for their future management (Kristina, 2009). On the other hand, as already stated earlier, leadership entails setting direction, creating a vision, identifying strategies and aligning, motivating and inspiring people within a group. This calls for creativity, innovativeness and critical thinking ability as key attributes of the leader (Lavinson, 2004).
Conclusion
In conclusion, leadership is the process of social change by which one makes use of his/her influence to set a new direction/vision to an organization. Management, on the other hand is the process of controlling the resources of an organization towards the attainment of set organizational goals and objectives. The world business environment has seen tremendous shift to emphasize on leadership as a way of meeting the contemporary needs of a global competitive business landscape. There is a great interplay between Leadership and management based on the fact that both processes involve social influence of an organization towards some common objectives. However clear differences are marked by distinguishing management functions from leadership functions in an organization. While management functions include planning, organizing and controlling a group all of which are based on management theory, knowledge and experience, Leadership functions involve setting goals, aligning, motivating and inspiring people all of which call for creativity and innovation. As such, it is clear that leadership can be distinguished from management by its use of critical thinking.
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