Question
Why is leadership important?
Answer
In most businesses, including healthcare, we find over-management occurs. Over-management refers to doing a lot of management tasks rather than leadership tasks. We are over-managed and under-led. Tasks need to be managed, and people need to be led.Leadership is a learned skill. We think of people as 'born leaders', but that is not true. Leadership is a learned skill and research shows that it is directly connected to outcomes. Good leadership leads to good outcomes. Bad leadership leads to suboptimal outcomes. It's important for us to focus on leadership.
Manager is a job description. Management is something you do. A manager is someone who supervises or directs others; that could be a line supervisor or even a corporate president. Everyone from lowest level supervisor to highest level president is a manager. Management includes tasks like planning and setting objectives. We refer to 'managing your resources, ' which could be human resources or financial resources. We manage things to achieve objectives and we measure our results. Management is a process.
Leadership is a little different, because a leader is someone who is there to guide and inspire others. It could be guiding their actions. It could be guiding and inspiring their opinions. It's someone who takes the lead in an enterprise or a movement. Leaders have followers and leader is a role as opposed to a job description.
This Ask the Expert is an edited excerpt from the course, Leadership in Healthcare, presented by Claire Aloan, MS, RRT-NPS, FAARC.
