Differences and Similarities of Leaders and Managers - Marks & Spencer

TASK 1

a) Differences and similarities between leader and manager of Marks & Spencer

Difference between manager and leaders

• Leaders always create vision while managers create a goal of a company. Managers of Marks & Spencer focus on setting, measuring and achieving goals.
• Leaders are unique because they are self-aware and work actively for their brand while, managers are copy as they learn their work from upper authority and adopt leadership style (Difference between leaders and managers, 2018).
• Leaders of a company want to try new things even if they fell while, managers do not take any type of risk for a firm.
• Main aim of leaders is to motivate their team members while managers focus only to complete their work at any cost.
• Leaders of a company always promote for changes while managers react on it.
• Leaders focus on building long lasting relationship with their stakeholders, team members while managers focus on system and process as well as ensure members to attain desired goals and objectives (Kim and Cho, 2018).
• Managers give direction to their staff while leaders motivate the team members.
• Leaders help to define goals and objectives of a business while manager just help their employees by giving direction in order to attain that goals and aims.
• Managers of Marks and Spencer create new ideas while leaders help them to implement those into a work area.
• The biggest difference is that leaders always take responsibilities while managers take credit of their work.

Similarities between managers and leaders

• Both managers and leaders work for the welfare of company and they both want to lead the firm and take it on the further level of success (Johnson, 2017).
• Leaders and managers; both work and take decisions for the success of business and they give direction and guidance to employees to attain all defined goals and objectives of a company.
• For the betterment of organization, it is necessary to have both leaders and manager. They both should work to lead a business and improve their employee’s performance in a company.
• Both; leaders and manager work for the planning, organizing and directing of a company.

b) Functions of manager according to Fayol

According to Henri Fayol, there are five different functions which every manager must possess. These five functions mainly focus on the relationship between personnel and its management that help them to solve various types of problems in a creative manner. These functions are:

• Planning
• Organizing
• Commanding
• Coordinating
• Controlling

These functions of Fayol help to increase the efficiency of managers as well as employees (Five functions of Fayol, 2018). These functions also show the relationship between all departments and provide the scenario to manage the work as well as help in decision making of managers. By using Fayol’s five functions, managers of Marks and Spencer try to achieve all targets. By using his first function i.e. planning, managers start focusing and preparing a course of action which help to increase their personnel’s skills. An important concern for the managers for planning is to take into account all organizational resources as well as human resource capability. Even managers can plan, implement and review regularly to see whether their plan is on progress or not. The next function is organizing. Managers take this function in order to develop an effective coordination between various levels of departments as company has different structures and sizes.

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Third function is commanding which helps to give proper direction by the managers in order to produce desired output for a company. With proper communication, managers earn respect from their staff as well as the departments. Fourth function of Fayol is coordination which is the most important function that creates a direct impact on productivity of a company. By using this function, managers of a company establish effective communication skills in between different departments (Fairhurst and Connaughton, 2014).

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