Introduction
Medical facilities need leaders to mentor, control, manage, implement, and make strategic decisions that facilitate delivery of quality, timely, and affordable medical care services. Leadership is an art of managing and developing strategies to be followed in an organization: the delivery of quality medical services depends on the quality of leaders that a medical facility maintains (Lewis, 2004). This paper discusses the main role of leaders and the challenges they encounter in the performance of their duties.
The role of leaders
Leaders drive an organization through the kind of decision they make. The quality of decision creates a competitive advantage to a firm. An efficient leader should involve his team in decision-making. Leaders have the role of implementing strategies, entrepreneurial and mandated with the role of creating a winning team. Different situations and organization calls for different leadership styles, thus management should ensure that they understand the kind of style that can be implemented in their organization (King, 2002)
The roles of a leader are to ensure that he organizes resources in the best combination for best results. He should thus inspire and empower people to realize their potentials; it is through this that he can make a good performing team. In times of change, a leader is supposed to pioneer a company to the desired destination, he/she is required to be on the forefront and build confidences and trust from his juniors. By this, he is playing the role of being a captivator and enterprise guardian. A leader has the role of being a strategist, it is through the policies and decision that a leader makes that makes a certain business successful.
Personal experience as a leader
I am the leader of a social group consisting twelve people of whom three of them are couples; in the group through informal we engage in social activities like picnics, games, visiting children homes, and recreational activities. As the chairman of the group, I find myself playing the role of a leader, I have to plan, coordinate, come up with strategies and guide different activities that the group intends to do. Since the group consists of working and non working people, I am mandated to come up with policies that will ensure that every person attends a function and never quote lack of funds as the main reason why he or she will not attend.
When playing the role, I have realized that as a leader, I need to be determined, organized and a good planer failure to which the activities I am arranging will not be a success.
Reasons why leadership roles may be hand to undertake
In their duties, leaders are faced with numerous challenges; the challenges may emerge from personal attributes where the leader fails to have skills and characters. Other challenges may come from the character and the personalities that the leader is controlling. One issue that has become a challenge in the medical industry is diversity; diversity in the medical care facility has lead to different caliber of employees within the medical care facilities; the world has embraced globalization thus there are a number of international students who are taking medical related courses in the country and they end up getting employment in the country (Crother-Laurin, 2006).
The medical industry recruits talents and expertise from different parts of the globe; the recruitment process leads to people of diverse cultures, believes and backgrounds in the industry. Different personalities, expertise, age and experiences should be combined effectively to have a winning team; the challenge is how to blend the differences offered by diversity to come up with a winning team (Bate, Robert & Bevan, 2004).
References
Bate, P., Robert, G., & Bevan, H. (2004). The next phase of healthcare improvement: what can we learn from social movements? Quality and Safety in Healthcare, Vol. 13 no. 1, pp. 62-67.
Crother-Laurin, C. (2006). Effective Teams: A Symptom of Healthy Leadership. The Journal for Quality and Participation, 29 (3), 4-6.
King, R. (2002). Leadership in the NHS: Leading at all levels. Nursing Management, 8(9), 26–27.
Lewis, P.(2004). Team-Based Project Management. Washington: Beard Books.