Leader vs. Manager

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Leader vs. Manager Leadership, as pointed out by Schober (2016), refers to the art of motivating people to accomplish a common goal. In healthcare settings, leadership means directing healthcare professionals with a competent strategy to improve patient care outcomes and achieve organizational goals. Management, on the contrary, describes the process of coordinating and administering tasks to attain specific goals. The main activities that comprise management include planning and coordination of staff efforts. Leaders and managers are individuals, who coordinate leadership and management tasks respectively. These professionals possess various attributes that enable them to accomplish the projected leadership and management goals. This paper highlights the attributes of a leader and a manager.

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Leader One of the key attributes of a good leader is integrity. Leaders need to be honest, reliable, trustworthy, and consistent. Leaders should choose words and actions correctly and make decisions representing the organization's true value and culture. Integrity enables leaders to build trust with colleagues and clients (Ellis, 2018).

Another crucial attribute of a leader is effective communication. A leader needs to communicate effectively with followers to ensure the message is clear and easy to execute.

Leaders, who employ good communication skills, build trust with colleagues and increase the productivity and morale of the employees (Ellis, 2018). A leader, who communicates effectively, is a valuable asset to the organization since he/she sets the base to reduce errors and promote employee involvement in decision making.

Importantly, a leader should possess delegation skills. Effective delegation is crucial in the health care system since it promotes continuity of care (Gallos & Bolman, 2021). The ability to delegate implies that the leader is aware of the employee’s competence and skills.

Manager A major attribute of a good manager is creativity. Creative managers devise outstanding strategies to solve organizational problems. They also use their privileges to enhance organizational productivity by implementing new tactics to improve operations. In healthcare, a creative manager recognizes patients as integral elements of the industry, thus devise practical measures to improve patient experience through enhanced service.

Another attribute of a manager is responsible. Managers are responsible for employees’ performance. They, therefore, keep a tab of all stakeholders to identify areas of weakness and

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strengths (Andrew, 2018). Managers need to be committed to helping all employees to grow professionally by keeping them engaged.

Confidence is also a vital attribute of a good manager. Confidence involves making practical decisions and sticking with them. Andrew (2018) noted that the manager must convince employees to embrace certain decisions and move forwards even when other less or equally effective decisions were available.

Personal Experience During practice, I have engaged with supervisors who possess both leadership and managerial traits. Using leadership traits, the supervisor would involve the entire healthcare team to brainstorm new ideas on serving patients. The supervisor would encourage team members to give opinions on how to resolve practice issues. As a manager, the supervisor was actively involved in overseeing staff performance, scheduling, education and professional growth to ensure the practice was running like an oiled machine. The supervisor also made decisions involving patient care planning and goal settings and communicated them to the nurses.

Conclusion Leadership and management are complementary qualities that cannot be separated. Good leaders and managers possess a similar set of skills that are crucial for personal and organizational productivity. Whereas leaders devise new tactics to improve productivity, managers give directions on how employees should behave to achieve the projected organizational goals.

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References Andrew, P., (2018). 7 Leadership Qualities Of Great Leaders: What Makes A Great Leader.

Positively.

Ellis, P. (2018). Leadership, management, and team-working in nursing. Learning Matters.

Gallos, J. V., & Bolman, L. G. (2021). Reframing Academic Leadership. John Wiley & Sons.

Schober, M., (2016). Introduction to Advanced Nursing Practice: An International Focus.

Springer.