Personal views on leadership
Leadership is being on the forefront when a task is being undertaken as a group. To lead is also to be the best in that area or field and making the others follow by the good example you have laid before them. Leadership also taking the responsibility making the best out of the opportunities and possession of an organization values as our own idea.
Difference between leadership and management
Managers rely on systems (Booyens, 2007 p 418), that is, they ensure that an organization achieves its objectives by following the procedures that were agreed upon earlier before the working process began. A leader on the other hand relies on people- i.e. to enhance productive action (Booyens , 2007 p 418). Managers are concerned with seeing tasked completed according to schedule while the leader goes a step further to think about the future or how the entire process can be made easier and better. Thus while managers are concerned with things done, solving problems as they emerge daily according to routine the leaders are thinking strategically about the whole organization long term well being (Booyens, 2007 p 418). The leader visualizes the problem before it occurs while the manager sticks to the system until it fails.
The manager usually feels no sense of ownership about goals and objectives while the leader accepts and develops goal with which they can be personally identified with. The manager sets goals as a result of necessity, what he/she feels the organization needs to exist or make profit. A leader on the other side is constantly revising the strategies to meet the goal of a transformed organization with a promising future (Booyens, 2007 p 418). The manager utilizes what the system setting offers; the plan, the budget and specified tools and has no gives little space to risk or trying new things out. Leaders are prepared to take risks based on the judgment of their key executives (Booyens, 2007 p 419).
Managers being task-oriented, they use their power bases to either reward or threaten their subordinates to get the task completed according to the set goals. Leaders use the sense of purpose and hope to emphasize the use of the attitude change to make the workers motivated enough to see themselves almost like heroes and heroines by achieving the goals (Booyens, 2007 p 419).
Since managers are reliant on systematic selection of goals, application and avoidance of risk, they are not associated with innovation and change. Leaders are imaginative thinkers, flexible, broad thinkers and dynamic. They seek to develop what managers will seek to apply.
Characteristics of an effective leader
Leadership is working through individuals and groups to realize the goals and objectives of an organization. An effective leader motivates the fellow employees through a sense of purpose, ownership of goals and long term forecast that bring about innovation and evolution. He/she is concerned with molding and shaping attitudes of workers. Most importantly, he/she has to lead by example by service to those subordinates who are in need of his/her expertise and assistance. In nursing he/she has to address the changing working conditions of employees and the ever expanding expectations of patients in a dynamic and strategic transformation (Monica, 1986 p 8).
Conclusion
Nursing as a profession struggles with the differences between a manager and leader but then it recognizes that both are integral for the future success of the profession. Managers as dutiful conservators and regulators of the everyday activities are just as necessary as leaders who develop new approaches and imagine innovative dimensions. There is a need in balance so that we can have managers who are as well leaders (Klainberg & Dirschel, 2010 p 78). Since the leader is mostly about personal traits or personality type, managers are the ones to embrace change.
