Leadership and Management in Health and Social Care - Essay Example

A leader can not have all the skills required therefore the optimum will be to have as a leader someone who is flexible but when it is required s/he will let the leadership to the others.

Leader and Manager – Definitions

Although no ultimate definition of leadership exists (Yuki 2002), the majority of leadership definitions reflect some basic elements, including “group”, “influence” and “goal” (Bryman 1992).

 A general definition would be that “a leader is someone who influences a group of people towards the achievement of a goal”. There are 3Ps that are related to the term “leader” and these are People, Purpose, and Person.  A leader is a person that is deeply committed to a goal and s/he will try to achieve it even if nobody follows him/her.

A leader is someone who has a personal vision and in order to achieve it s/he needs the help of others. The leader should communicate his/her vision in such a way that the followers will share it and the goal will become a common goal.

The leader needs the trust of the followers. Some people are more effective than others at influencing people. This effectiveness has been attributed to leadership styles, persuasion skills, and the personal attributes of the leader. A leader is someone that brings big changes and innovations, someone who has handled effectively big crises whereas a manager is someone who improves the effectiveness of an organization at a given place and at a controlled course.

Leadership effectiveness – Health and Social Care Sector

According to research done by Kouzes & Posner (2002) on effective leaders, the conclusion that emerged is that effective leadership has more to do with the abilities of the leader rather than his personality.

They concluded therefore that the ability of the leader is the following:

• To give staff a vision
• To give direction
• To challenge the existing processes and create new
• To enable staff to take initiatives
• To encourage staff  

These five capabilities have established the basis for what constitutes effective governance for the health and social care sector.
The same researchers examined the characteristics that people are looking for in their leaders and they are the following:
Fairness
Skill
To be able to look forward
To inspire others

The same authors stress the issue of credibility in the workplace. This observation is related to an earlier work of Argyris & Schon (1976) as referred to by Large et al (2005) indicating that the behavior of leaders reflects their beliefs.
Davidson et al (2006), Jasper (2002) & Siriwardena (2006) indicate the differences between leadership and management. As Siriwardena (2006) states the difference between the private sector leader and the leader in healthcare is the vision and the behavior of the leader.