In examining the characteristics of leadership, we turn to the next segment in the leadership framework, shown in Figure 3.1.

Who are the leaders in healthcare?

If leadership is thought of as the process of influencing people in the formulation or pursuit of goals, then potentially everyone working in healthcare can be a leader at some time, for some purposes. On the other hand, there are differences between the context, power base, purposes and practice of leadership between, say, a hospital chief executive and a ward sister, or a medical director and a Department of Health policy advisor. Some leadership in healthcare is also practised outside the formal healthcare organisation, for example, by patient groups, by MPs and by local government councillors involved in health scrutiny. Should they all be treated as the same, in terms of their leadership? Or, should we consider how their roles and their resources have an impact on the kinds of leadership that can be exercised, and on what basis? This chapter is concerned with defining some of the characteristics of varied types of leadership in order to understand more about how they influence other people, groups and goals. This takes us into a consideration of the roles of leaders and the resources they have available to them (sources of power and influence) in both organisational and network settings in healthcare.