Isabelle Jensen- Paper 1

After reading this article, it has given me a whole new perspective on leadership and how

far some organizations take it. Leadership should not have to be taken to such great lengths to be

taught, and it should rather fall onto natural leaders. The point this author is trying to make is that

the NHS has become so focused on the ideas of what a leader should look like and how they

should train them to become good leaders, they have forgotten that followers are another big part

of leadership.

The author of this article describes followers as an essential role in leadership. However,

she feels as though the NHS has begun to have a hard time defining the difference between their

roles as followers and leaders. In her eyes, leadership requires a group of followers. The author

also goes on to ask the question if the staff calling for 'distributed leadership' actually know what

kind of followers are logically needed for their idea of 'distributed leadership' to work. This was

very interesting because it seems as though they may have a great idea of how leadership should

work, but they don't understand that leaders must logically have good followers as well.

The terms management and administration are brought up a couple of times throughout the

article, whereas administration is a term that has expired, and management is the new term

people want to use. However, the terms are quite similar. This is closely related to what we read

about in our textbook between management and leadership; the two are very similar but people

tend to use leadership more often. In the article, they describe the term administration as “old and

bad”, and describe management as “good and new” (Checkland, 2014).

The author gives many reasons why she does not believe that leadership may be learned

by all, and this is one of the things she disagrees with on how NHS is trying to teach everyone

how to be a leader. In the book, they talk about how leadership is a process, and how anyone can

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become a leader over time. This is quite the opposite of what the author of this article is trying to

say. Throughout the article she talks about how there is so much training on becoming a leader,

that NHS is missing the real description that fits what leadership is. She uses the argument that

no one can quite know what makes a great leader such as Winston Churchill, and we must save

the word leadership for these extraordinary cases. The smaller leadership roles people take on

should be called management as to not detriment the word leadership and its true meaning. In the

end, I think the author, Kath Checkland, is onto something about ‘teaching leadership’. I do

believe that with enough knowledge and experience, everyone holds the power to become a great

leader. However, this does not mean everyone will, and it is something special that must be

saved for someone truly inspirational.

There is not just one way you can define leadership, as it means many different things to

different people. Our textbook talks about a few ways leadership can be defined, such as; the

focus of group processes, personality perspective, and an act or behavior. Leadership is a

process, meaning that it is not linear, but rather an “interactive event” that allows it to be

available to everyone (Northouse, 2015). Another big part of leadership is influence, this

includes the communication between leader and followers, but most importantly how the leaders

affect their followers. Leadership cannot take place unless it is in a group setting, this is because

it is about influencing a group of people rather than one single person. One other important

aspect of leadership is a common goal, or goal attainment, between the leader and followers. The

leader and followers must be after the same goal for the leader to help the followers reach their

goals.

Kotter argued that leadership and management are quite different. His perspective is that

management is providing order and constancy to an organization, and leadership provides

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change and movement (Northouse, 2015). When you compare Kotter's perspective on

management and leadership to Zaleznik's, there are both similarities and differences. Zaleznik

argues that managers are people who work with people to solve problems with low emotion

involves, and leadership is very "emotionally active and involved" (Northouse, 2015). If you take

these two arguments and look at what was said about management, they are pretty similar. Both

Kotter and Zaleznik agree that management is about providing order and solving problems

within an organization. On the other hand, they also both agree that leadership is very actively

involved, like providing change. The only difference in their arguments is the words they used

for their definitions. Burn argues that both followers and leaders are an equal part of the

leadership process, and this is correct. The followers have the same powers as the leader, and this

is sometimes what people find hard to understand, and can take advantage of it. They also hold

the power of influence, because, without their desire to be influenced by the leader, the group

would not be able to move forward.

The module 1 activity was something I had to think through carefully while deciding which task

was management and which was leadership. When thinking about my day to day tasks, I would

consider most of them to be management, as I don't feel I do leadership tasks every day. There

are some days where I am leading a project at work, and this would qualify as a leadership task,

but it is certainly not every day. My daily tasks usually include paying bills, taking care of our

puppy, working out, and doing the work my boss gives me to do. However, this task has made

me realize that I should incorporate more leadership into my everyday life to gain more of the

skills I will use once I graduate.

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References

Checkland, Kath. Leadership in the NHS: Does the Emperor Have Any Clothes? 2014,
journals.sagepub.com/stoken/rbtfl/sQu0Q.LJi7UO2/full.

Northouse, Peter. Leadership : Theory and Practice. SAGE Publications, 2015.