The difference between management and leadership is that management is concerned about structuring the organization and placing individuals in the right positions that are able to perform the functions of those duties and monitors the progress of the people’s performance. Leadership motivates the people to understand the vision of the organization and to help them to move closer to that direction, and to help them rise above what obstacles that may stump them.
Managers are responsible for being a manger and a leader all rolled up into one, but it takes an effective leader to carry out the roles. A leader has to have followers that are willing to follow the quest. The manager must be able to understand the people’s potential prior to placing them in a particular position within the organization so that there will be a good fit to the organization. The mangers that are staffing the positions want to be able to have individuals that can work on there own and be able to get along with others within the environment.
The staff needs to understand the vision of the organization, and o be able to follow that quest and stay on tack, not deviate from the vision of the organization. To make sure that the staff understand the vision the leaders within the organization must be able to lead the staff to function and give the tasks to the appropriate individuals that they know could handle the tasks. New employees coming on board may be coming right out of college and have not idea what to expect.
This is where the leaders have to guide and mentor those individuals and build them up to be able to perform independently. Managers have to be able to keep control of the work environment to make ere that the organization is moving towards the direction of the vision. One way for this to take place is to be able to measure performance to make sure that the staff is not deviating from the organizations missions that bring them closer to the vision. One way for this to happen is to set up evaluations of their work performance.
Every individual must be evaluated on the standard performance that was laid out by the objectives that were created, and make sure that the standards have been met continue to reach further goals on the measurements. Also to be able to control the Budget to make sure that the funds that help keep he organization afloat is there and not being misused by having Audits. The company can have an internal audit to make sure that they know where the funds are being placed and being spent appropriately. Just recently in the Science and Technology Division (SST) that I am under there has been a budget cut seven months into the fiscal year.
This came from higher commands that the budget has been severed so the Science and Technology Division decided to cut the Travel Budget because that will save the whole budget that was laid out to continue with the research and development projects. This also makes the individuals be more creative in keeping updated with their partners and customers by doing teleconferencing or Video Conference without the travel involved. Only travels that will be approved are ones that the customer is willing to pay for the individuals to go to them.
To keep the organization motivated the individuals within the organization have to be motivated to come to work and have self worth, they want to be able to see their work make a difference in what they are doing. In today’s market there are a lot of opportunities for individuals to stray from company to company ND the best way to keep them from straying is by keeping them involved in there work that the are good at doing. Within the past year I was moved out of the front office and into a cubical to be able to concentrate on the travel for the Science and Technology Division.
One of the supervisor and the director had decided that in order for me to get what I needed done they needed a receptionist type person in the front office. There are over 100 individuals that I have to make travel arrangements for and sometimes that is hard to do when you are also doing a receptionist job as well. The front office can get extremely busy with visitors coming and the phone constantly ringing and it has to be answered, that I was constantly being interrupted in completing the tasks.
If the person has to travel and the travel arrangement doesn’t get done in a certain time the person has to go through making arrangement of postponing the meetings with the customers that need their input. Since it has been a over a year that I have been moved I am really glad that they had made that decision, because while I was in the front office I started to feel extremely stressed with deadlines having to be met for all the travel that sakes place and what is involved with the individuals going on travel every day of the week.
Security briefings have to be met prior travel and Passports are needed and if they don’t have one they need to get one. I was not involved in the decision making process of this move but management clearly seen that the position needed some changes and I am glad that it was done considering that I am in a better position now.
