Organizational Behavior For Leadership In Health Care

Attributes of a team leader

Discuss about the Organizational Behavior for Leadership in Health Care.

An individual who offers preventive, promotional, curative or rehabilitative medical services in a very systematic process to community, family or other people is regarded as the healthcare provider or a health professional. The term health professional involves all the distinct branches of a health organization i.e. medicine, pharmacy, surgery, midwifery, dentistry, nursing, and psychology. Within each field, expertise, practitioners, skilled and experienced members are being classified or promoted into team leaders. A team leader is an individual who provides specific direction, guidance and instructions in terms of an unambiguous field to a group of people in a team for achieving a distinct goal. An efficient and an effective team leader know the pros and cons of the team members and thereby develops strategies to motivate the members and strengthen the team’s position (Borkowski, 2015).

The key attributes of the leadership responsibility include influencing group actions and coping with the transformation.  Even within large health care organizations, the several groups with linked subcultures might support or be in disagreement with each other. According to Ciulla (2014), there exists the need for a leader who requires exploiting on the variety within the association in total and competently utilizing wealth when scheming management process, while giving confidence to workers to function towards frequent goals. In this report the roles and values of a health care leader are going to be discussed and also the impact of poor leadership on the community and staffs of the health care system would also be discussed.

As stated by Harrison et al. (2015), effective leaders in health services emphasize continually that safe, high quality; compassionate care is the top priority. They ensure that the voice of patients is consistently heard at every level; patient experience, concerns, needs and feedback (positive and negative) are consistently attended to. “The quality of compassion and integrity is present naturally in a team leader, but leadership skill is attained through formal training and experience. An effective team leader is welcomed and trusted by all team members and it also boosts production within the workplace” (Daft, 2014). 

As stated by Fernandez et al., (2015) a team leader should have a clear objective and direction while supervising and sustaining an interdisciplinary team in the health care sector. The leader should implement strategies and incorporate a specific set of values and transmit them to each and every member of the team clearly.  Such attitudes and values of the team leader aid in achieving competency echelon to manage various patients and critical health case. The team leader keeps a check of the documentation of every single patient. He or she is a medical professional who monitors all the infrastructure of his department and keeps it up-to-date. Their focus is to give patient-centered care and feedback obtained from the service users is taken positively to construct and develop his team’s performance (Harrison et al., 2015).

Consequences of poor leadership

According to (Huber, 2013), a team leader with an effective communication skill is very imported in order to transfer the information and ideas to all the team members. It might be in any field, this paramount quality of written and verbal communication is a significant attribute that helps to meet the expectation of the work presented. As discussed by Johnson 2013), a team member is an individual who also listens to the inputs of the other members of the team in the health care sector to boost up the moral and confidence. Moreover, this helps to develop trust among other members of the team, and the members feel that they are being respected. For example, during a surgery involvement of several doctors and nurses are observed. It is the team head who might be the senior most doctors or any other professional who guides the whole team and provide instructions based on their roles (Huber, 2013).

“As discussed by MacPhee et al. (2013), a quality team leader should be very honest and fair while dealing with the team. The fair action includes giving recognition to the good performance of team by rewards and acknowledgment. They also take disciplinary action if team members are not meeting the organization expectation or if they are negligent. Integrity is also a crucial characteristic of team leader. Such leaders are liked and respected by all as they treat everyone equally. They delegate the task to trustworthy team members. It helps team leader in health care organization in focusing on other activities such as improving hospitals function and extending the health care service. An effective leader should be a powerful facilitator too. As a facilitator team leader for health care profession explains the health care organization goal to each health care staff such as registered nurse, physicians, etc. In the case of handling any critical patient with a chronic disease or a burn patient, they make an appropriate plan with interdisciplinary health care team on how to start the treatment process and the role of each member in the process” (Koh et al., 2013).

According to Lavine (2014), the health care industry performs at a rapid speed and therefore there exist certain uncertainty. Considering situations where the health condition of the patient is deteriorating or a sudden emergency case, a team leader should be prepared with his team members to welcome and serve the clients with their best effort. A health care professional might face a variety of challenge, and therefore, he should be accustomed to such complicated situations. “An effective leader knows how to plan for improvement, communicate the vision to each employee and how to implement plans. They understand that they are accountable for each activity, so they measure the success of all plans before implementing it” (MacPhee et al., 2013).

“Healthcare industry is about building a health-related relationship with the client and different expert panels of a physician. According to Piccolo & Buengeler (2013), a good health care leader is one who remains constantly involved at every level of the organization. They interact efficiently with the principal stakeholders like employees, physicians, patients, families, and the community. They know the skill how to integrate each relationship and unite all of them in particular health care service. Health care organization constantly redefines traditional practice structure and patient-centered model of care. Therefore having the above qualities will be helpful in managing these changes” (Munir et al. 2012).

In a health care organization, a team leader is encircled by knowledgeable physicians with a different area of expertise as well as experienced nursing and other employees. The team leader can with no trouble recognize new talents by sure parameters. Related to those parameters, they reflect on the person useful for the association and employ that person. As stated by Nancarrow et al. (2013), a team leader should be optimistic in every circumstance. They are extremely energetic and labor with a fervor for growing their organization. No leader is born with an innate talent to show a group the right direction. They also make a blunder and gain knowledge of them. They continually sharpen their skills. They look for for opportunities to expand their aptitudes. “They hone their skills by reading article and books on leadership and attending seminars. Some also copy actions of other leaders or meet them to gain knowledge and get inspired them. They can learn ways of mentoring from them. Healthcare industry has advanced in developing cutting edge life-saving equipment, but they are lacking in quality mentoring. So leaders need to learn these skills. This skill will help leaders to learn many things early in their career. This kind of exposure in their career will help them to develop required competency in their field” (Piccolo & Buengeler, 2013).

A poor leadership results in negative consequences, and the cause of poor leadership is the lack of vision. As discussed by Stoller (2013), a consequence of a poor leadership results due an aimless leader.  If there exist no specific objective in leadership there cannot be any systematic planning as well and the outcome of this the whole system gets hampered, and a lot of confliction arises. Such aimless goals also hamper the relationship between the team leader and the team member due to lack of trust. Moreover, the performance level of the team members leans down without proper planning and strategy. Furthermore, a poor leader exaggerates the problem and makes the situation more complicated (Rowitz, 2013).

According to Stoller (2013), a leader with poor skills and knowledge cannot strategies proper plan and objective, mission and vision of the health care organization. Such a leader is incapable of balancing their strategies in accordance with the organizations norms and policies. Furthermore, some leaders do not know the significance of involving other members of the team in any sort of decision. Therefore, such actions lead to the development of gaps in between the relationship. Such a homogenous situation leads to problems and complications in their performance which indirectly affects the health care organization (Schyns  & Schilling, 2013).

As discussed by Shrader et al. (2013), in the health care sector lack of strategic planning might have ill-effects on the patient. The works get hampered. Considering a patient with chronic kidney failure was instructed to apply dialysis by the physician to the nurse. If the instruction was not given properly or else without judging the experience or work span of the nurse the instruction was given and executed by the nurse, then there remains a probability of complication. Such execution of inexperienced or improper work might deteriorate the condition of the patient and even it could be fatal (Stoller, 2013).

Healthcare also has a liability to communicate with the client or the patient and appreciate their affliction and health conditions. As discussed by Weaver et al. (2014), the complete survey and verification of the medical history of a patient is too important. “So if leader explains to each staff member that they need to interact with patient regularly, any confusion from the patient side can be eliminated” (Swayne et al., 2012).

A leader has the capability to change the whole scenario of an organization. Poor leadership has several negative consequences on the organization. As stated by Valentine et al. (2015), a poor leader might lead to elevate the employee turnover rate, the low performance level of the workers, low moral values among the employees and also affects the reputation of the organization. “Work integrity is also hampered as poor leadership leads to erosion of professional values and ethics. A good leader acts as a light directing the organization towards excellence, but poor leadership is like a shadow which darkens many areas of the organization. In health care, poor leadership results in medical errors and poor quality of care.  It happens because health care leaders do not communicate patient-centered goals to each member” (Weaver et al. 2014).

Leadership tools:

According to Wheeler et al. (2013), recently there are many leadership tools that have been developed to measure the abilities and flaws of a leader. In terms of a health care sector also based on the “health care leadership model” several effective tools have been designed to identify the positive nature and the weakness of a team leader. Such tools can be utilized to assess or evaluate the strength and weakness of an individual. “It will help me realize which dimension of health care leadership model is critical for me. I will rate myself by comparing my activity with those dimensions of health care models. I will also use this tool to evaluate the role of other team members.”

“There are various leadership self-assessment tools now available to judge individual leadership skills. Several tools are also developed on healthcare leadership model. These exercises help leaders to identify their abilities and weakness and solve critical organization problems. According to Wheeler et al. (2013), these tools contribute to improving skills through assessment, learning, and practice. I will use this tool to understand my own behavior and identify strength and weakness. It helps me focus on those areas where I may be lagging in my work. The self-assessment tools are in the forms of questionnaires on our area of activity. It will help me realize which dimension of health care leadership model is critical for me. I will rate myself by comparing my activity with those dimensions of health care models. I will also use this tool to evaluate the role of other team members” (Yukl, 2012).

The assessment tool for judging a leader has various aspects depending on the field of activity. As stated by Wheeler et al. (2013), some of the evaluation aspect e the cognitive aspect, use of strong strategy, ability to achieve power and influence, recognition of the poor performance, ability to develop team management ability, effective empowerment, etc. For example, the cognitive exercise would help the leader to understand and exercise various strategies during the different situation. In situations where the patient and the family members are worried, a leadership tool exercises the strategies how to deal with such situations and how to help them to move towards a comfort zone. Moreover, the questionnaire tool have sets of questions which if answered would able to recognize an individual’s strength and weakness (Wheeler et al. 2013).

Conclusion:

An individual who offers preventive, promotional, curative or rehabilitative medical services in a very systematic process to community, family or other people is regarded as the healthcare provider or a health professional. The key attributes of the leadership responsibility include influencing group actions and coping with the transformation. A team leader with an effective communication skill is very imported in order to transfer the information and ideas to all the team members. It might be in any field, this paramount quality of written and verbal communication is a significant attribute that helps to meet the expectation of the work presented. A poor leadership results in negative consequences, and the cause of poor leadership is the lack of vision. A leader with poor skills and knowledge cannot develop strategies proper plan and objective, mission and vision of the health care organization. Such a leader is incapable of balancing their strategies in accordance with the organizations norms and policies.

Thus, it can be concluded that the report is a comprehensive detail on the values and competencies required by a team leader. It has highlighted the general skills required by a team leader working in any field. It has also explained the skills required for a team leader in health care industry. It has explained the consequences of poor leadership on the organization. Some examples have also been given related to the crisis in health care organization arising due to poor leadership. Finally, it has described assessment tool available for leadership assessment and how it can be helpful for individual and team members to develop their skills.

References:

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Ciulla, J. B. (Ed.). (2014). Ethics, the heart of leadership. ABC-CLIO.

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