Mutually inclusive

Some authors put aside the differences between management and leadership and use the terms interchangeably because managers are “people who occupy positions in which they are expected to perform a leadership role” (Yukl, 2010, p. 8). Managers assert influence over people and processes; as far as leadership is an influence process, managers serve a leadership role. The manager’s ability to perform the functions of their job--planning, organizing, and controlling activities toward common goals--can be limited by their ability to influence people and processes. Similarly, a leader’s effectiveness may be limited by their ability to plan, organize, and control human “activity toward common goals” (Donaldson, 1996, p. 150).

This suggests that managers must have leadership competence, and leaders should have management skills--or the ability to engage others who can plan, organize, and control collective action toward the leader’s vision. Platitudes that assert leadership and management are diametrically opposed concepts promote an inaccurate stereotype that tarnishes understanding of both while diminishing the potential effectiveness of those who adopt bumper-sticker cliché as a guiding philosophy.

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©2021 by Brent Duncan, PhD. All rights reserved.