Healthcare Managers And Leaders Essay

Studies on the subjects of leadership and management have the underlying difference between a leader and a manager as “managers maintain things and leaders change things.” Gill (2006:26) explains their difference as “Managers plan, allocate resources, administer and control whereas leaders innovate, communicate and motivate”

Understanding the difference and similarities between managers and leaders can be enlightening. Managers develop and manage plans that impact the strategic vision of an organization while leaders set strategic visions for the organization. Managers establish plans, support strategic plans, and organizational objectives. Managers also evaluate and track the achievement of tactical plans that have been assigned to specific staff. While on the other hand leaders motivate staff to achieve the object and task set forth. Managers serve as problem solvers. Managers are the people who assign resources to groups. On the hand leaders serve as persuasive change agents.

Both managers and leaders are responsible in assisting and keeping the hospital or organization running and promoting the organization to continue into the future. Managers and leaders have different distinct roles, but the ones that are the most effective, are the ones that will combine the roles and functions into their workday everyday. There roles and responsibilities can be similar, but also can be different. A manager can be a leader, but a leader isn’t necessarily a manager (GCU, 2011).

Much has been written about the difference between management and leadership. In the past, competent management staffs ran effective companies. In light of our ever-changing world, however, most companies have come to realize that it is much more important to lead than to manage. In today's world the old ways of management no longer work. One reason is that the degree of environmental and competitive change we are experiencing is extreme. Although exciting, the world is also very unstable and confused. In an article entitled What’s the Difference between Your Hospital and the Other? Gary Campbell states that the difference between a manager and a leader is that the manager “finds himself quite willing to

Leadership and management are essential to any health care organization, balancing patient care, employees, physicians, and the organization. Nursing is founded on interpersonal relationships. As a people-oriented profession, nursing leadership styles are influenced by humanism. The mission, attitude, and behaviors of a health care organization begins with its leadership, which creates the direction and purpose of the organization. The purpose of this paper is to differentiate between leadership and management, describe views of leadership, and explain the

Leadership and management are needed to convert challenges into opportunities. A manager can be seen as a ‘person who has the responsibility, control and influence over a person or group of people and their activities’. Leader = ‘being a person’s reason for doing something’

The social responsibility and function of a health care organization is to provide a safe patient care at all-reasonable ethical practice, and leadership is necessary to guide the organization towards accomplishing that goal. Leadership role in healthcare involved providing the support for planning, directing, coordinating, providing and improving care, treatment and services to patient and it simultaneously, improve the organization health care product in the community.

According to McConell (2012), the difference in a leader and a follower determines the success of a person regarding leadership. This chapter helps explain the content of qualities and proficiency for healthcare managers to be effective. Once again, effective management skills or certain qualifications enhance a healthcare organization environment. Healthcare managers and supervisors must have the capacity to handle challenges while the organization objectives and regulations may change over a period of time. Effective healthcare management governs the success of a healthcare organization. There are many different skill sets and leadership styles to be effective as a manager. People are interested in knowing what strategies are effective

Anderson (2012) suggests leaders acquire power and focus on empowering others, as well as motivating and inspiring others. Leaders are influential, sincere, and take risks. Managers are given a formal role and are assigned specific duties with definite responsibilities. Managers plan, organize, coordinate, and control (Kelly & Crawford, 2008). Clearly there is a significant amount of overlap between leaders and managers. In order to effectively lead and manage this new facility, it is my ambition to incorporate the best characteristics of both. Effective application of both skill sets may assist me to provide a balanced and productive work environment.

Styles of leadership have a direct impact on quality in healthcare. A skillful leader leads an organization towards accomplishing goals. Strong leadership is in demand in healthcare. The role of the leader has a great significance on healthcare policies. There are numerous leadership styles applied to healthcare. Among these leadership styles are transformational, complexity, and emotionally/behaviorally intelligent leadership. One leadership style alone will not prove to be successful. In today’s rapidly there is a need leader’s to use all of the tools they have available to be successful, while driving costs down and quality up.

In general, we are familiar with the quote managers do things right while leaders do the right things. In essence, the analytical versus the holistic approach of leadership addresses these two separate and distinct functions within an organization. For instance, a manager focuses on the daily operations of an organization with an emphasis on team delivery, budgeting, and supervising the employees. Contrarily, leaders within an organization focus their time on improvements and innovation. In particular, leaders can perform this function since they are not culpable for routine tasks and mired in the minutia. As a result, there is a misnomer that managers are leaders and leaders remain managers, but they are not exclusive. Therefore, being a manager and a leader requires different abilities and dispositions.

Oliver (2006) has stated a few roles of leadership in healthcare. The key roles are teaching, inspiring confidence, empowering, improving the performance by having the supporting reflection or clinical observation. The other roles are rewarding and recognizing individual contributions and recognizing the needs of the service from clinically based environment.

“Leaders in health care should be upfront and leading by example to demonstrate their leadership abilities and assist with health care duties and responsibilities. A good leader says let’s go and gets things done instead of waiting for others to get them done. He must be in the front line seeing patients and managing the health care duties that makes their health care practices successful. An efficient leader must understand every-ones roles and responsibilities in order to appreciate what everyone does in the practice. Appreciating what each employee does for the practice is key to

Management involves the tactical aspect of day to day functions and who keeps control of the work environment to make sure the organization is moving forward and in the same direction of the company’s vision. Managers are faced with many responsibilities each day, one of which is managing people. The goal of a successful manager is to achieve the highest productivity of the organization by way of the people he/she manages. A manager is more of a problem solver and takes care of work areas relating to people management, time management, decision making etc.

As the healthcare industry continues to evolve, it requires people who attain great leadership qualities. The success of an organization depends on employees that can inspire people around them to achieve greatness and deliver quality care to the patients. Being in the healthcare industry, we have seen many changes recently. Therefore, by having a person with leadership qualities to guide others through these changes, while maintaining an organization that can deliver quality care is indispensable.