OD TOOLKIT

Read: management & leadership 2: Differences between management and leadership.

Some quotes from Bennis, a leading author on leadership.
(Bennis: On becoming a leader. Addison Wesley, NY 1989)

'The most crucial characteristics of leadership are vision, ideas and determining the direction; it has more to do with inspiring people with the direction and the goals then with guiding the daily course of things.'
'Leaders do the right things, managers do the things right.'

Managers	Leaders

control	innovate
are a copy	are the original
maintain	develop
aim at systems and structures	aim at people
have confidence in control	inspire towards confidence
aim at short term	aim at long term
ask how and when	ask what and why
pay attention to bottom line	pay attention to horizon
take status quo as given	challenge status-quo
do what they are told to do	follow their inner voice
do things right	do the right things

A conclusion on the basis of some authors on leadership (Bass & Stogdill, Bennis, Covey, Gardner, Greenleaf, Hesselbein, Kinds, Kotter, Kouzes, Owen, Renesch, White and Zaleznik) is that leadership is based on three elements: personal traits, system of values and norms and skills. Literature describes (and prescribes) so to speak the ideal leader. He or she would be characterised by:

personal traits: internal locus of control, credibility, emotional intelligence
system of values and norms: moral authority, involvement, guiding vision
skills: learning ability, empowerment, cooperation and networking

In a study, carried out by De Groot, it turned out that only the system of values and norms is significantly discerning managers from leaders. In other words: there are good and bad leaders and good and bad managers, but the main distinction is that leaders are unusual value driven.