UPI Study › Courses › Foundations of Leadership › Free lessons › Lesson 5.2 Free with a free account
Leadership as a Core Management Function
Foundations of Leadership · Chapter 5: Intersection ModuleSection 5.2 · lesson 18 of 9013 min · free with a free account
Free preview
Create a free account to keep watching
It takes a minute and costs nothing. Your free account unlocks all of Chapter 1 and 3 more lessons of Foundations of Leadership.
Lesson complete
Earn the 3 college credits for Foundations of Leadership
Enrolling adds a quiz after each lesson, the graded work and the official transcript. Recommended for credit by NCCRS.
Next lesson: Legitimate Power and Its Role in Leadership →← Leadership vs. Management: Key DistinctionsNext lesson: Legitimate Power and Its Role in Leadership →
In this lesson
How directing became leading - and how it interlocks with planning, organising and controlling.
- Locate leading among the classical functions
- Describe what the leading function looks like day-to-day
- Explain how it interlocks with the other three
- Diagnose the leadership demand inside a managerial role
Free study notes
Get this lesson's notes by email
The key points and 4 practice questions with answers, in your inbox. One email, free.
One email. Unsubscribe in one click.
Transcript
Everything said in the video, section by section (1,731 words). Read along, or search it.
Intersection Module
Leadership as a Core Management Function
The previous section treated leadership and management as conceptually distinct activities. This section examines the other half of that relationship. The long tradition that places leading inside the manager's job. As one of the classical functions every manager is expected to perform. We will trace how the activity once called directing became the activity now called leading. And how it interlocks with planning, organising and controlling. The aim is to help you recognise the leadership demand inside any managerial role. And to discharge it deliberately, rather than by default.
The Other Half
Leading Inside the Manager's Job
Before we start, hold two ideas at once, because both are true. Leadership is a distinct kind of work, as the previous section argued. And leadership is also a component of managerial work, as this section will argue. Those are not in conflict. And holding both at the same time is exactly what allows you to diagnose a real role accurately.
Origins
From Five Functions to Four
Modern management thought traces its formal vocabulary to Henri Fayol. His nineteen sixteen work identified five universal functions of managerial work. Planning, organising, commanding, coordinating, and controlling. Fayol's argument was administrative, rather than psychological. He was less interested in the personality of managers than in the work they had to perform. And his framework proved influential because it gave a general grammar to a discipline. One that had previously been treated as the personal craft of owners and foremen. In nineteen thirty-seven, Luther Gulick condensed and extended Fayol's list into the acronym POSDCORB. Planning, organising, staffing, directing, coordinating, reporting, and budgeting. The term directing covered the activities we now describe as leading. Issuing instructions. Communicating expectations. Supervising work. Resolving disputes. Through much of the twentieth century, leading was treated as a fairly narrow subset of management. The part that involved face-to-face supervision, rather than paperwork. From the nineteen seventies onward, the scope of the term expanded sharply. Absorbing what earlier writers had called motivation, communication, influence and morale. Today most management textbooks list four functions. Planning, organising, leading, and controlling. With leading bearing a far heavier conceptual load than Fayol's commanding ever did.
Why the Word Changed
Commanding to Directing to Leading
It is worth pausing on why the word itself changed. Fayol's original term for this function was commanding. A word that captured the early-twentieth-century assumption that managerial direction flowed downward, from formal authority. Then workplaces changed. They became more educated, more knowledge-intensive, and far more reliant on discretionary effort. And command alone proved insufficient. Here is the sentence that makes it concrete. A modern engineer or analyst cannot be commanded into creativity. So the vocabulary shifted. To directing, and then to leading. Reflecting a deeper change underneath the words. Managers must now earn influence, rather than simply exercise authority. Even within their own formal span of control.
The Function
What Turns Plans Into Action
Within the four-function model, leading is the activity that turns plans and structures into committed action. Consider what the other three actually deliver. Planning specifies what the organisation intends to achieve. Organising specifies how the work is divided and resourced. Controlling specifies how performance is monitored and corrected. And none of those three produces movement on its own. People do not execute a plan because a plan exists. They execute it because someone has explained it. Given it meaning. Set an example. Addressed their concerns. And held them to account. That intermediate work is the leading function. Which makes it the function most directly concerned with people, rather than with systems. And also the function least amenable to a template. A budget can be filed. An organisation chart can be drawn. A control report can be standardised. The activity of leading, by contrast, must be improvised against the situation in front of the manager. The mood of the team. The credibility built or lost in previous interactions. The specific anxieties created by a piece of news.
Day-to-Day
Six Recurring Activities
The leading function unpacks into six recurring activities. The manager communicates. Translating strategic decisions into language a team can act on. And translating field information upward, into language senior leaders can use. The manager motivates. Diagnosing what each team member values, and constructing assignments, recognition and feedback that align personal motivation with organisational goals. The manager coaches. Building capability through deliberate questioning, observation and challenge. So that people grow into harder work over time. The manager resolves conflict. Intervening when interpersonal friction threatens output, and absorbing tension that would otherwise spill onto colleagues. The manager models conduct. Because team members infer norms far more reliably from what their manager does, than from what their manager says. And the manager represents the team, upward and outward. Defending its work to other functions, securing the resources it needs. And shielding it from demands that would prevent it delivering its primary task.
Interlock
The Leadership Demand in Each Function
Each of the four functions carries its own leadership demand. That is worth seeing directly. Planning asks what we are trying to achieve, and how. Its output is goals, strategies, schedules and budgets. Its leadership demand is to articulate the why. Not merely the what. Organising asks how work is divided and resourced. Its output is roles, structures, processes and staffing. Its leadership demand is to ensure people understand their place in the whole. Leading asks how we convert intent into action. Its output is communication, motivation, coaching and conflict resolution. Its leadership demand is the function itself. Engaging discretionary effort. And controlling asks whether we are on track, and what must change. Its output is performance data, variance analysis and corrective action. Its leadership demand is to hold people to account, without undermining their commitment.
Styles
How the Function Gets Performed
How a manager performs the leading function varies, and there is a classical typology for it. Kurt Lewin and colleagues, in nineteen thirty-nine, distinguished three styles. Autocratic leadership, in which the manager decides and announces. Democratic leadership, in which the manager consults, and decides with the team. And laissez-faire leadership, in which the manager delegates decisions and intervenes minimally. Each has legitimate uses, and it is worth naming them precisely. Autocratic decision-making is appropriate in genuine emergencies, and in domains where the manager has decisive expertise. Democratic decision-making produces stronger commitment and better-quality decisions when the team holds relevant knowledge. And laissez-faire works best with mature professionals, operating on familiar ground. Later models refined this into a continuum, rather than three discrete points. The Vroom-Yetton decision model helps a manager choose between five decision styles. Based on the importance of decision quality, the need for commitment, the team's relevant information, and time constraints. And the point of these models is not to label a manager as one type. It is to expand the manager's repertoire.
Case
Two Managers, One Plan
Here is a case that isolates the leading function almost perfectly. Consider two regional sales managers. They work from the same quarterly plan. They are organised into the same structure. They report against the same controls. Manager A spends most available time in spreadsheets. Sending instructions by email, and reviewing variance reports. Manager B spends most available time talking with team members. Explaining the rationale behind targets. Coaching weaker performers. Brokering peace between competing accounts. And arguing the team's case with senior leadership. By the end of the quarter, Manager B's region typically outperforms Manager A's by a meaningful margin. Even though the plan, the structure and the controls were identical. The difference is not magic. It is the leading function, performed deliberately rather than minimally.
The Reframe
Leading Is a Current, Not a Step
Recent scholarship has questioned the neat separation of the four functions. Because in practice, a manager does not plan on Monday, organise on Tuesday, lead on Wednesday, and control on Thursday. The four activities are interleaved minute by minute. And the leading function in particular runs through all of the others. The way a plan is announced is an act of leading. The way a structural change is communicated is an act of leading. The way a variance is discussed in a performance review is an act of leading. The contemporary view, often associated with Henry Mintzberg's work on managerial roles, treats leading less as a separable function. And more as a continuous current, shaping every other managerial activity. That reframe has a genuinely practical implication. A manager who treats leading as a discrete task, something done in scheduled one-on-ones, will under-invest in it. A manager who treats it as a continuous current will look for the leadership opportunity in every routine interaction. How a budget meeting is opened. How a complaint is responded to. How credit is distributed for a small win. Leading, in that sense, is less an item on the calendar than a posture sustained through the working day.
Warning
The First-Time Manager's Trap
There is a specific trap here that catches new managers, and it is worth naming. New managers, especially those promoted for technical excellence, default to planning, organising and controlling. Because those activities feel familiar. And because they produce visible artefacts. Schedules. Charts. Dashboards. The leading function, by contrast, produces no artefact at all. And its effects compound slowly. So the first-time manager who skips it can survive a quarter or two, on the strength of an inherited team. But eventually engagement drops. Retention slips. And performance becomes harder to sustain. The corrective is not to spend less time on the other three functions. It is to recognise that the leading function will not perform itself. It must be scheduled, practised, and reviewed. Like any other professional skill.
Integration
Each Function Fails Without Leading
The most skilled managers use the leading function to amplify the other three. A plan is more likely to be executed if the manager has led the team through its rationale. Rather than simply publishing the document. A structural change is more likely to take hold if the manager has led the team through the loss and rebuilding it implies. Rather than announcing it as a fact. And a control conversation is more likely to drive improvement if it was led as a learning exercise, rather than as an accusation. In each case, leading does not replace the other three functions. It makes them work. But the integration runs the other way too, and this is the part that gets forgotten. Leading without sound planning becomes inspirational drift. Moving the team enthusiastically in the wrong direction. Leading without proper organising becomes interpersonal heroics. One manager personally holding together work that should have been structured. And leading without rigorous controlling becomes cheerleading. Momentum, without accountability. The functions are mutually reinforcing. And managerial maturity is, in part, the ability to feel when one of them is carrying too much of the load.
About Foundations of Leadership at UPI Study
Foundations of Leadership (Business 205) is a self-paced online course of 90 video lessons in 12 chapters, from the roots of leadership theory and the trait, situational and transformational approaches to power, decision-making, communication, teams, conflict, diversity and global leadership. It carries a NCCRS credit recommendation for 3 semester credits.
Every lesson transcript is free on pages like this one, and the videos are free with a free UPI Study account. Enrolling adds a practice quiz after each lesson, the graded work and final exam that earn the credit, lifetime access, and an official transcript on completion. UPI Study has helped over 130,000 students with college credits. ACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities.
Enroll now → Course details Download the syllabus All Business courses Every course with PRO →
Compare: Management and leadership courses · Foundations of Leadership vs Leadership and OB
Why take it here
Why students take Foundations of Leadership with UPI Study
Where the credit goes
Universities that work with NCCRS
Foundations of Leadership carries a NCCRS credit recommendation. These universities work with NCCRS; some are UPI Study's signed partners. ACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities.
Thomas Edison State UniversitySigned partner
University of the PeopleSigned partner
Charter Oak State CollegeSigned partner
Strayer UniversitySigned partner
Columbia Southern UniversitySigned partner
Indiana TechSigned partner
Penn StateWorks with NCCRS
Southern New Hampshire UniversityWorks with NCCRS
SUNYWorks with NCCRS
+many more cooperating universitiesFind my college →Find my college → Not listed? Ask Athena in the corner of this page, or book a 15-minute call.
FAQ
Questions students ask us
About Leadership as a Core Management Function
What are the four functions of management?
Why did commanding become leading in management theory?
What does the leading function of management involve?
Why do new managers often neglect leading?
About the Foundations of Leadership course
How many college credits is Foundations of Leadership?
How much does Foundations of Leadership cost and what is included?
Which universities accept UPI Study credits?
How long does Foundations of Leadership take?
How are the exams done?
How do my credits reach my college?
Ready for the full course? Earn 3 credits in Foundations of Leadership.
90 video lessons, a quiz after each one, and the graded work that earns the credit. Recommended for credit by NCCRS.
3 credits · NCCRSEnroll →