THE MANAGERIAL MYSTIQUE, Restoring Leadership In Business, Dr. A. Zaleznik, Perennial Library, Harper & Row, Publishers, 1989, 279 pages in paperback. This book addresses why managers do what they do. Dr. Zaleznik describes and illustrates the differences between managers and leaders. Of great significance is how managers and leaders advance in their careers. Managers general do not take chances and seldom allow themselves to fail. Leaders on the other hand will try, fail, and try again while learning from each mistake. This one difference helps explain why management is so reluctant to change, i.e., risk a failure, --there are too few leaders and too many managers. Managers enforce rules and procedures whereas the leaders asks questions like; "What should we be doing?", "Where are we headed?" and "How do we get there?". The difference is very important because managers will ensure that we get to where we are headed but we may not want to be there when we get there. VISION -- We need leaders with vision.

Abraham Zaleznik is Professor of Leadership Emeritus at Harvard Business School. He has written several books and articles on general management and leadership issues.

Zaleznik comes straight at the point in this article, he start with this question: "What is the ideal way to develop leadership?" Most societies provide their own answer to this question. According to Zaleznik business has contributed by evolving a new breed called the manager (remember that this article was originally published in May-June 1977). And he believes that this has led to organizations becoming bureaucratic with an emphasis on rationality and control. Zaleznik believes that managers and leaders are very different kinds of people. "They differ in motivation, personal history, and in how they think and act." In order to prove his point, he discusses differences in attitudes toward goals, conceptions of work, relationships with others, and personalities. Eventually, Zaleznik concludes that we have to examine two different courses of life history in considering the development of leadership. The first one is through socialization, the second one is through personal mastery. "Society produces its managerial talent through the first line of development; leaders emerge through the second." But Zaleznik believes that organizations can develop leaders. Unlike known myths, he does not believe in peer training. He believes in one-to-one relationships between senior people and potential leaders. "Great teachers take risks. ... The risks do not always pay off, but the willingness to take them appears to be crucial in developing leaders." This OnPoint edition is complemented with a strong retrospective commentary by the author, which was published in March-April 1992.

This is an fantastic article by Abraham Zaleznik, I could really quote the whole article. It discusses the differences between managers and leaders, which is followed by a discussion how leaders are developed. Highly recommended to anybody interested in management and leadership. For readers interested in leadership and the difference between management and leadership I also recommend the articles by Henry Mintzberg (1975), 'The Manager's Job: Folklore and Fact', John Kotter (1990), 'What Leaders Really Do', and Tom Peters (1979), 'Leadership: Sad Facts and Silver Linings'. The author uses simple US-English.

I felt that the first three writers were the strongest. Mintzberg promotes an idea that leader is just a role in his advocated all mighty manager. Zaleznik brings this down with his idea that managers and leaders are different kind of people and talk about managerial mystique. But maybe best advice how to solve present leadership dilemma comes from Kotter, who says that companies should pick up talented individuals and then put them to grow into leaders through tough challenges.

Gives an insightful view of a manager's job. It enunciates traits and behaviors of leaders and managers very well, and explains how it is important for a manager to have both traits. The material triggers a manager to look within to understand one's leadership and managerial styles. If one wishes to change or develop leadership and managerial skills this material is a great beginning.
It also points out that organizations and academic institutions are good at developing organizational specialists but not at training managers. The author thinks that these institutions should provide management programs that also focus on developing leadership and managerial skills. But to do that it's important to understand what managers and leaders really do.
Overall a very good read for a traditional manager to be introspective and effective.

Excellent book with eight fantastically different views on Leadership. Describes fundamental differences between leadership and Management and brings forth thought process which can help professionals in all fields. Contents are 1) The managers Job (folclore and fact), 2) What leaders really do, 3)managers and leaders (are they different), 4) The discipline of building Character, 5) the ways CEO's lead (5 different ways gathered from study of 160 CEO's),6)The human side of management, 7) the work of leadership, 8) whatever happened to the take-charge manager, also contains brief background about the contributors. Each chapter is from a different contributor

Zalezhnik shows why Lacan did not exaggerate in condemning American psychoanalysis as a disgrace to the memory of Freud. A self-styled classical analyst (who alienated most of the faculty and students of the Harvard Business School), Zaleznik understands nothing of the truly revolutionary meanings of what Freud wrought. This book is psychoanalytic pap.