Leadership and Management There Is

¶ … Leadership and Management There is a key distinction between the terms management and leadership. This distinction becomes even more pronounced when it is applied to the roles that individuals fulfill while striving to achieve objectives related to these two concepts. As such, there is a fairly salient difference between a manager and a leader. Essentially, managers may be called upon to lead -- although they do not necessarily have to.

Leaders, for the most part, are such regardless of their individual rank within an organization, and have the proclivity to produce behavior that attracts others to follow them. MANAGERS That said, the key distinction between these two roles within a healthcare organization primarily relates to formality. Managers are individuals who have been given positions of power and authority. They often have the need to delegate and allocate resources towards the achieving of specific objectives that are always in alignment with those of the overarching organization.

They do not have to be noted for their charisma or their people-skills, since their position is rooted in authority in which they have copious amounts of control of the processes of a particular organization. LEADERS Leaders, on the other hand, do not expressly have positions of power, authority and control that managers have. By definition, of course, all a leader needs to have to stake such a claim is followers.

Therefore, one of the key distinctions of a leader is that he or she has a fair amount of influence within an organization -- especially within a health care organization. Such an influence may be based upon position and rank, but it can also be intrinsically related to personality, charisma, and the desire to show to others how to achieve an objective -- which either may or may not be related to those of the organization.

LEADER EXAMPLE When I first started working in the healthcare industry as a registered nurse, I quickly became friends with an individual named Lorna. Although she was a registered nurse just like me -- and had been transferred to the location only two weeks ahead of me -- she was definitely the leader of all of the RN's at this particular location. She had no more authority than the other nurses, but she had a magnetic personality that always was an "inspiration" (your textbook p.

32) for us to attempt to keep up with the example of excellence that she set. Perhaps it was because she had three children and had been abandoned by her husband, but Lorna always set a model example in the way she performed her work. She made sure to be at her shift 10 minutes before it started, and never hesitated to hang around the office helping out after her shift ended.

She would always make sure that she had friendly relations with the other nurses on her shift, and would help to remind them of their duty and certain details that allowed them to improve their jobs as well. She was a classic leader. MANAGER EXAMPLE Our manager at the aforementioned location.