Managers Who Lead: A Handbook for Improving Health Services

Health program managers everywhere grapple with the same challenges: Tackling complex health problems with limited resources. Defining priorities. Inspiring staff. Initiating change. Demonstrating measurable results.

Managers Who Lead empowers health managers at all levels of the health system—in the public or private sector—to lead teams to face challenges and achieve results. It answers questions such as: How can I lead and manage more effectively? How do I create a shared vision and a clear path for achieving it? What can I do to improve work climate? How can I prepare myself and others for higher levels of responsibility? How do I lead change inside and outside my organization?

This handbook provides practical approaches for applying key leading and managing practices that managers can use with their teams to face challenges, overcome obstacles, and realize their vision of better health for all. Real-life examples illustrate how to transform work groups and organizations into high performers. It offers exercises and guidelines facilitators and managers can use to strengthen individual and team performance, and the accompanying CD-ROM includes a wealth of additional resources for developing the ability to lead.

Managers Who Lead is based on more than 20 years of experience in working with health professionals around the world in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors to strengthen the performance of health organizations and improve people’s health. It builds on the ideas and approaches of renowned leadership thinkers and researchers and applies these approaches to the challenges that health managers face. Managers will come back to this book again and again for guidelines and inspiration.

Funding for this handbook was provided by the Office of Population and Reproductive Health, Bureau for Global Health, US Agency for International Development (USAID) through the Management and Leadership (M&L) Program.

Managers Who Lead : A Handbook for Improving Health Services, published by Management Sciences for Health, 2005, 294 pp. paperback $40.00. ISBN 0-913723-95-9

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