The concepts of leadership and management differ in various ways. According to Day (2014), leadership is concerned with providing guidance to the people or an organization.
It deals with creating a vision for the future and motivating the people to achieve the vision. In this case, it is noted that leaders are original in the sense that they come up with a unique vision and motivate their followers to work towards achieving it. On the other hand, management is concerned with controlling resources such as people to achieve the goals that have been set.
A manager manipulates what is available to ensure that what is desired is achieved. Basically, a leader has followers while a manager has workers. From this perspective, it is noted that the two concepts are different because management is about copying or using what is already present. For instance, an organization might set goals and then provide all necessary resources to achieve the goal. The role of the manager is just to ensure that the resources are controlled in a manner that will achieve the goal.
One of the areas in which management and leadership overlap is through influence. In both cases, influence is very essential. For a leader to be effective, he needs to influence his followers to ensure that they achieve the mission. Similarly, managers need to influence their workers to make sure that they achieve the goals and objectives that have been set ahead of them.
In both cases, the leader and the manager need to stand out and has an impact on the people that look up to them. Planning and organizing are other areas in which the two concepts overlap. Leaders and managers should be able to plan and organize.
The overlap between the management and leadership concepts comes in the sense that there is something that should be achieved. There is a target on which all the efforts are focused. In addition to this, both leadership and management involve an element of dealing with people.
In both cases, people play a very important role. Nothing can be achieved without the human resources. With respect to this overlap, it is noted that in both leadership and management, interpersonal relationships play a significant role. It is important to understand how to deal with and interact with people in different ways.
Leaders and managers cannot be successful without the people. The people provide the manpower needed to achieve the vision and the goals that have been set. For the best results, it is necessary for an individual to have both leadership and management skills.
As a nurse leader, it is possible to create change by taking advantage of the overlap in different ways. First of all, leadership concepts will enable the nurse leader to create a vision that his team should achieve over a specified period of time. He can use the same concepts to motivate the followers to make sure that there is an effective achievement of the vision (Clark, 2009).
Similarly, an incorporation of the management concepts will enable the nurse leader to effectively control the available resources to ensure that the set goals and objectives are achieved. Basically, taking advantage of the overlap between management and leadership will enable the nurse leader to effectively create a change.
References
Clark, C. (2009). Creating Nursing Leadership and Management. Boston: Jones and Bartlett Publishers.
Day, D. (2014). The Oxford Handbook of Leadership and Organizations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.