Romanian Sme'S Management: Leader Versus Manager In A Nutshell

It is a quite common misconception that leadership and management hence manager and leader are synonymous. While managers can be team leaders and vice versa, because of the complementary qualities inexorably linked with each other with any attempt to extricate one form the other proves impossible. There is a difference between the skill-set required for management and leadership. It is a common belief that whereas managers exists to plan, organize and coordinate leaders serves to motivate and inspire. Romanian SMEs active in a challenging environment, having to prove itself to each and every client and supplier, are on a permanent Holy Grail quest of finding the right persons for their top management, because if a company has the right people, they can really make a difference. This paper is first of all about people and leadership as much as about management, presenting the findings of a rather small research exercise in an attempt to identify the dominant characteristics as either manager or leader for the members of the target group with the purpose to make them aware of their capabilities as a starting point in improving their performance as well as their companies performance. Research results are critically analysed and conclusions draw on findings providing future research directions.