Leaders are BORN and Managers are MADE, REALLY?

Leadership and management are words that stick together in the business world, but it is important to understand the differences between these two, because managers have to be LEADERS, but not always managers behave in that particular way.

To manage is a way to conduct or represent a responsibility; managers are characterized by some attitudes as: a passive and functional manner, moderate taken risk, the avoidance of solitary work, the acceptance of their life and the encouragement of team work. And on the other hand, to lead is a way to influence others and basically to guide and leaders are distinguished by an active attitude, high levels of innovation and imagination, high-risk decision’s making and the making of fresh approaches to old problems. However, both characters make a healthy organization.

Across the time, in the literature have been developed many theories and cases about how to define a leader, but few generalizations have could be done. In the early years of analysis, the leadership was defined as a relationship between leaders and followers, which seeks for a shared, and leaders’ types were classified as: authoritarian which retains as much power and decision making power as he/she can, without consulting the staff; consultative which talks to everyone involved in the situation to reach to a decision; democratic that has a participative style, keeping employees informed about the changes and shares decision making responsibilities; and laissez-faire which gives employees a huge amount of freedom.

With the years many other theories were developed, creating a huge network of information. As were the Ohio State Studies which said that the leadership behavior is based in an initiating structure (How leaders made their activities), and a consideration (The building of work relationships); the Michigan Studies that divided the leadership in two types, production-oriented and employee-oriented, similar to the Leadership Gird developed by Blake and Mouton which describe the leader behavior according to their concerns, which can be oriented by the results or the people.

Then some theories were created taking into account the situations in which the leader were involved, as the Path Goal Theory that states that a leader's behavior is contingent to the satisfaction, motivation and performance of his subordinates; the Normative decision model notes that leaders follow a path of evaluations that help determine the type of effort a decision will require; and the Situational Leadership which affirms that leaders should adapt their style to follower development style, based on how ready and willing the follower is to perform required tasks.

Nowadays, other types of leaders have been determined by the contemporary cases that are showed in the world like the Transformational, the Charismatic and the Authentic leaders, bringing ethics and moral considerations to the leadership studies.