The Leadership in Health Care Management

Introduction

The effective leaders are developed through continuously working, education, training, and experience. The study sheds light on different leadership style of a leader in healthcare organization. The report compares leadership theory with individual leadership style. The essay explains how the desired leadership style can be achieved by a person.

Summary: Three Leadership Styles

Leadership has an essential role in managing quality initiative in health care systems. The three types of leadership are autocratic, servant, and transformational.
Autocratic leadership style also known as the top-down approach is considered as the classical approach. In autocratic leadership style, the authority remains with the leader. The worker’s compliance is obtained by threatening and punishing them. The leader follows the carrot and stick type of leadership.
The leaders set goals and do not allow others to participate in decision making process. The style is effective in a situation when employee does not respond favorably to any other leadership style or giving orders to an untrained employee who do not know about task and procedures to follow. To deliver clinical quality and implement clinically-led service improvements, it is necessary for a leader to decentralize its power and decision making authority (Oliver, 2006).
Servant leadership is another style in health care systems which begin with the feeling to make a positive impact on life of others. From the perspective of servant leaders, the leader keeps interest of others foremost before their interest. The servant leader is ethical and value-oriented in nature. The leader strives to promote quality by involving in community development programs. The servant leader leads by example. The genuine caring resulted in improved organization effectiveness, increase team performance, enhance employee satisfaction and improve focus on customers (McCann, Graves & Cox, 2014).

The transformational leader is a change agent that communicates clear vision, empower others by motivating performance and inspire subordinate to achieve goals. The five critical elements required to become a transformational leader for successful transformation of patient care are impetus to transform, commitment of leader to quality, improvement initiative, and integration of culture and function (Lucas, 2007).

Leadership theory and Style of Leadership

Healthcare systems comprise of numerous professional groups, departments, and specialist that have nonlinear interaction between them. Leadership theories are dynamic in nature and continually evolving. The transactional leadership theory closely reflects the current autocratic leadership style. The theory also termed as exchange theory to be effective must have a motivational value.
In autocratic style, I align punishment and rewards for performing leader assigned task adequately. The autocratic style ensures that a mutually reinforcing environment is created. Thus, being an autocratic leader, I am more likely to associate with individuals that add to my strength.
In the current critical care environment, the leader frequently encounters with challenges such as resources constraint and increasing complexity of care. Therefore, it is a prerequisite for a leader to manage the complex and stressful work environment by framing strategies to manage stress and conflict. Hence, to become an effective leader it is important to learn transformational style.

The essence of transformational leadership is interaction with emphasis on management of change and empowering staff to achieve a shared vision in a collaborative manner. In adopting changed style of leadership, the leader should support and encourage innovation, inspire and protect ideas, and work and treat staff as human beings. The style is ideally suitable to the present climate of change. All in all, the transformational style goes beyond my current style of autocratic and transactional leadership that focuses on supervision, organization, and group performance. The transformational style creates unity, and motivates performance through their ability to influence attitudes. Managing relationships and communication delivery is a crucial facet of leadership.

Developing Transformational Leadership

In today’s health care quality management, transformation leadership is ideal and suitable style. The essential structural elements of quality improvements in health care organization are catalysts for process change such as efficient organization capabilities and group dynamics. To implement clinical change in practice, the leader should demonstrate the organization clarity of purpose and outcome. To become a successful transformational leader on personal and professional level, a model for implementing change should be followed that includes:
Planning:
The leader should cascade clear mission among team members. The leader should involve team members in planning. The leader should create a sense of urgency for quality improvement. The active involvement of senior administrative leadership has a favorable impact on the quality of health care organization.

Defining the task:
The transformation leader should focus on objective that is SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely).
Briefing-
The change agent should effectively communicate goals and plans in a focused manner. The leader should seek opinions and involve subordinates in decision making so as to encourage and motivate them.
Controlling-
Quality improvements in health care systems can be costly. The leaders should prioritize quality agendas and commit sufficient resources to the implementation of quality improvement programs. The efficient use of resources, time, and effort is a critical aspect in implementing the change.
Evaluating-
I will set as a role model for others by establishing clear, realistic objectives that are based on organizational and patient needs.
Motivating and organizing-
In order to become a change leader one must learn to inspire the team members. The leader to be effective in its planning should systematic plan and structure the origination according to need of the project (Glickman, 2007).

Conclusion

Determining the effective style of leadership is important to successfully run the organization and ensure that goals are achieved.In the hospital, the leader should collaborative work with medical staff to deliver high quality, safe patient care, financial and environment sustainability and ethical behavior. The organization effort to develop transformational leader is essential to improving quality outcomes, patient satisfaction and maintaining healthy work environment.

References

Glickman, S. (2007). Promoting quality: the health-care organization from a management perspective. International Journal of quality in Health Care, 19 (6), 341-348.
Lucas, C. (2007). Transformational change in health care systems: An organizational model. Healthcare Management Review, 32 (4), 309-320.
McCann, J., Graves, D. & Cox, L. (2014). Servant Leadership, Employee Satisfaction, and Organizational Performance in Rural Community Hospitals. International Journal of Business and Management, 9 (10), 28-38.
Oliver, S. (2006). Leadership in health care. Musculoskeletal Care, 4 (1), 38-47