Health LEADS Australia and interprofessional education

Modern health services are amongst the most complex systems in the world and this complexity places huge demands on those identified as leaders. The image of the individual trailblazing leader, much valued in the business world, has also been pervasive within healthcare environments in Australia and beyond (Fulop and Day, 2010). This model focuses on the capacity-building of individuals as leaders so that they take on a mantle of heroic characteristics and traits, managing teams, juggling budgets and driving development of service policies and procedures. The emphasis is on one individual to manage the organizational challenges of an entire service or team, the hero-leader, the one person at the top of a hierarchy who works alone to take his/her followers to new heights (Dickson and Tholl, 2014).