Leadership and Healthcare
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Leadership and Healthcare
Leadership is the capability for an individual to influence others to achieve personal or organizational objectives. Leadership in any sector ensures the people are doing the right thing by directing, inspiring, and creating conditions that ensure they effectively perform their duties. Leaders are, therefore, a reflection of the organizations and the most important asset of any sector. The success or failure of business organizations depends on the leaders’ effectiveness and the qualities they possess (Weiss et al., 2014). Effective leaders are identified by their ability to manage situations, people, and resources through effective decision making. Healthcare organizations depend on leaders to ensure services and daily operations are conducted effectively to improve societal health outcomes.
The type of values influences healthcare organizations’ performance and administrative model implemented in the organization. Effective leaders can strengthen the quality of care through positive values created through a positive relationship with the followers (Sfantou et al., 2017). Effective leaders improve the structures, process, outcome, and patient satisfaction through their ability to identify issues, seek solutions, and integrate ideas from their seniors and juniors. Different styles of leadership can be applied effectively to influence perforce within healthcare. Transformational leaders create motivations that influence staff morale towards work. The transactional leader uses management strategies to influence how the staff performs. In all the leadership styles, the leader’s effectiveness depends on their effectiveness to create a positive relationship between workplace enforcement and environmental conditions. Effective leaders should ensure the workforce understands the organization’s mission to effectively utilize available resources, relationships, and the environment to achieve positive performance. Effective leadership coordinates care by addressing the needs of both healthcare professionals and patients.
Regulatory professionals ensure organizations comply with policies, clinical affairs, and quality assurance operations are effectively implemented. Regulatory professionals in healthcare collaborate with departments across the organization to ensure compliance with the health authorities (Hall, 2019). The corporate structure of healthcare organizations and increasing regulatory environment influence regulatory professionals’ need to develop leadership skills. Regulatory professionals play a strategic role in healthcare, including fostering growth in the medical field by understanding its complexity. Leaders influence growth by developing new knowledge about resources affecting healthcare services. Effective leadership skills help regulatory professionals to navigate different challenges by effectively planning and executing plans to improve team coordination. Like any other profession, regulatory professionals need to develop effective leadership skills as part of career development and professional success. They need to be exposed to different situations and scenarios to enable effective decision making.
Regulatory professional leaders need to develop some strategies that will enable them to manage effectively. These leaders need to question, interpret, and communicate effectively to ensure effective critical thinking (Hall, 2019). Question enables regulatory professionals to develop inductive or deductive tools for investigating laws and regulations. Interpretation enables the professionals to analyze and understand information to identify missing parts and develop accurate communications. Apart from technical strategies, regulatory professionals need to connect with their audience to understand their feelings and emotions like a resonate leader. Becoming resonate leaders enables to develop networks and influence the staff by building trust and eliminating risks of competing thoughts and interests through operations.
Servant leadership is a model that influences leaders to consider the needs of others, especially team members, when making decisions. Servant leaders involve team members in decision making and consider their perspectives by acting as servants (“Servant Leadership: Putting Your Team First, and Yourself Second,” 2020). These aspects of life increase engagement, create trust, and increased motivation. In Christian perspectives, leaders are not superior members of a team but humble servants. Leaders need to serve their followers instead of being served. These actions serve as a good example to the followers and may influence them to become more empathetic, self-aware, and more listening. Christians take an example of Jesus in taking human experience to redeem them from sin. Servant leaders are democratic and transformational since they acknowledge others’ ideas and motive through inspiration, respectively.
Stewardship includes taking accountability for the actions and decisions of the team members because you are the leader. In a healthcare setting, stewardship relates to professional responsibility through which leaders act as examples by demonstrating values and behavior they wish to get expressed by others (Nagy, 2020). Through stewardship, leaders create policies and objectives that aim to increase the quality of care and patient satisfaction. Since leaders wish to be accountable for good performance, the organization will improve its services and increase profits. Stewardship influences leaders’ desire to improve health outcomes by creating policies and values that reflect organizational goals.
Leaders in any organization can either be formal or informal. Formal leadership is attained through organizational positioning and assignment of roles. Formal leaders control and manage members as they exercise their position (Vercillo, 2020). These include managers in companies and other business organizations that influence individuals through their positions. Informal leadership includes the emergence of leaders without official authority. These include individuals who influence people through their ideas and convictions, even in official leaders’ presence. Informal leaders do not follow specific models of leadership because they are confident in their plan and ideas. Followers of the informal leaders are not subject to punishment when they fail to comply since their loyalty is optional.
Informal leaders influence others by conforming to their needs, even if they do not coincide with the organization’s needs. Informal leaders in health care organizations may influence staff members to achieve their goals, thus creating conflicts of interest. In most cases, informal leaders emerge to oppose the formal leader (Vercillo, 2020). These conflicting interests may lead to poor quality of care and low patient satisfaction. Efficiency in healthcare settings requires both formal and informal leaders to reconcile their differences. These actions will create a unified workforce through which the organization’s goals and those of the group are aligned for best performance.
The situational leadership model can be effective in healthcare settings. The model involves using various styles and behavior according to situations, tasks, and individuals involved (Weiss et al., 2014). Health leaders need skills to understand their motivations and situations to apply various leadership styles to achieve maximum results. In healthcare, there are situations where the leaders will apply emotions and feelings for relationship building. Still, there are situations the leader will use an authoritative style to ensure the completion of tasks. In the latter, the leader uses position power over the group to ensure each member reports to the leader. Results in healthcare depend on the style used and the situation requirements. Leaders should develop skills through which they develop the ability to shift their focus to influence participation, autonomy, and control over the staff. Healthcare leadership determines organizational performance because leaders can influence the staff differently. Consistency in healthcare can be achieved through situational leadership.
References
Weiss, D. F., Tilin, F. J., & Morgan, M. J. (2014). The interprofessional health care team: Leadership and development. Jones & Bartlett Publishers.
Sfantou, D. F., Laliotis, A., Patelarou, A. E., Sifaki-Pistolla, D., Matalliotakis, M., & Patelarou, E. (2017, December). Importance of leadership style towards the quality of care measures in healthcare settings: a systematic review. In Healthcare (Vol. 5, No. 4, p. 73). Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute. https://dx.doi.org/10.3390%2Fhealthcare5040073
Servant Leadership: Putting Your Team First, and Yourself Second. Mindtools.com. (2020). Retrieved 4 November 2020, from https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/servant-leadership.htm
Nagy, J. (2020). Chapter 13. Orienting Ideas in Leadership | Section 2. Servant Leadership: Accepting and Maintaining the Call of Service | Main Section | Community Tool Box. Ctb.ku.edu. Retrieved 4 November 2020, from https://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/leadership/leadership-ideas/servant-leadership/main
Vercillo, K. (2020). Best Leadership: Formal vs. Informal Leaders. ToughNickel – Money. Retrieved 4 November 2020, from https://toughnickel.com/business/Formal-vs-Informal-Leaders.
Hall, G. (2019). Regulatory Management and Leadership Strategies. Raps.org. Retrieved 4 November 2020, from https://www.raps.org/RAPS/media/news-images/RF%20Article%20Series/RF-Article-Series-Regulatory-Management-and-Leadership.pdf.