Differences Between Rural And Rural Leadership

It was mentioned that hands on leadership as much more appreciated in rural areas as opposed to the urban areas. Leaders were perceived to perform the entire task that is expected to be performed by the staff or consumers. Hence leaders needed to be in leading from the centre and not from the front line.
Emotional intelligence was considered as another area where urban and rural leadership differed. In the rural area, leaders were expected to address all the emotional issues of the staff along with managing their own emotions. It was not infrequent for the staff to come and vent all their feelings and personal life issues to leaders, even when the issues were not related to work Leaders had to support all the aspects of emotional well-being
The leaders who worked in both urban and rural areas, mentioned that in rural areas, there was lack of support and that led to innovative thinking on one side and at other times, less than optimal management. The lack of support could be clinical need support, financial support, facilities support and so on. The positive side of lack of support was that the leaders invented methods to survive and perform at the best with limited resources and also made efforts to keep the team together, as the lack of support often translates to stress if the leader does not proactively explain the system to the team members. The negative side of lack of support was that newer generations often decided to move on to urban areas for higher education and better support mechanisms. The followers often required to come to terms with themselves when less than optimal management happened specifically with adverse
It was highlighted that at every level there are different values and different measures of success. At the corporate level for example, value may be most efficient services and cost saving could be the measure of success; however at the ground level, value may giving ample time to patient for their issues and measure of success may be the highest level of patient satisfaction. Often these values and measure of success at different levels may not match and hence the differences arise and terminology likes ‘us and them’ development in the institution. In the same example as above, spending more than necessary time with the patient may be seen as loss of affectivity by the corporate sector team, since the values and measures of success are different at both these levels. This has the potential to lead to differences amongst staff and impaired coordination. In the rural area, the cog wheels need to be well aligned since each cog has higher value in the total output, as opposed to urban areas where cogs are small and hence the overall effect of few dis-coordinated cogs is not as pronounced as in the rural areas. The concept of ‘values and measure of successes also applied to individual levels at work place in rural areas. For example, value of the clinician may be in the successful resuscitation of a patient and measure of