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Understanding Leaders And Managers : Leadership And Management

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Understanding Leaders and Managers
In today’s business world employees, industries, and consumers look toward company leaders like Steve Jobs (Former Apple CEO), Anne Mulcahy (Former Xerox CEO), Jeff Bezos (Amazon CEO), Elon Musk (Former PayPal CEO), and Eric Schmidt (Goggle CEO) to understand the dynamic roles of leadership and management. These two allusive terms have inspired a great deal of conversation, articles, and books full of material about their true meanings. These two words have also inspired the academic world to create core and major courses in an effort to help future managers and leaders plan, organize, and lead. But what does Leadership or Management really mean and are the terms related?
Definition of Leadership and Management
The Oxford English Dictionary describes the word leader as a “person who leads or commands a group, organization, or country” and describes the word manager as a “person responsible for controlling or administering all or part of company or similar organization”. Each of these meanings are very close in proximity however many in the business world have different definitions for each of these roles. Although they are different they are linked and are complementary to each other (Oxford Dictionary (American English)).
Early History of Leadership and Management
Up until the 20th century many believed that the words leader and manager were synonymous. The words were only separated by the fields in which they were used. The word leader

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