Critically analyse leadership theories based on a survey of people working in the Australian health care system. From this analysis, students will consider leadership in health care within a wider context, identify the attributes of an effective leader, and may begin to embody these professional leadership qualities in their workplaces.
In general, leadership can be defined as the attribute that enables an individual to guide his or her subordinates to achieve a particular goal by working beyond their potential. (Weiss & Tappen 2015). It is challenging to be an effective leader in the workplace, as an excellent leader need to see above the plethora of facilities, policies, protocols and procedures to maintain the routine work in the organisation. They also need to overcome the bureaucratic influences to achieve the goal of organisation and help in its successful development and growth (Daly, Speedy & Jackson 2015). When leadership definition is extended in the nursing context, it can be stated that the leader is the person who can provide support, motivation, coordination and resources to facilitate the followers. This, in turn, help the organisation go forward and accomplish collective objectives (Australian College of Nursing (ACN) 2015). The rapidly changing demands in healthcare make it more difficult and challenging for the caregivers to provide high quality patient-oriented care. Therefore, it requires flexible and talented leaders to ensure that safe care and optimal patient outcomes are achieved by allocated proper staff in the workplace(Cummings et al. 2008).
The first section of this report will discuss the main concerns about current health care system in Australia. It will also portray the most significant factors that can boost the effectiveness of leadership in health care and the ways they affect both patients and health professionals. There are five people who have been interviewed. One of them is the General Practitioner(GP). The other interviewees are two Registered Nurse (RN), who are undertaking the Master degree, one Physiotherapist and one General Manager in Aged care facility. In the second section of this report, the author aligns the interviewees’ responses with a particular leadership style and thereby discuss the potential outcomes of the chosen and preferred leadership style in contemporary healthcare setting
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Aging population |
Nurse to Patient ratios |
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Indigenous people to access appropriate health care |
Difficult to attracting health professional to work in rural areas |
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Increased diversity in patient’s culture |
Medication errors |
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Increased chronic illness cost |
Staff retention (poor nursing staff wellbeing) |
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Funding inefficiency |
Insufficient training and support |
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Shortage of health professional |
Increased paperwork (including electronic-based), less time for patient care |
From the above interviews, it can be seen that the healthcare system is now facing a number of challenges in Australia. Armstrong et al. 2007 has stated that “The next Australian Government will confront major challenges in the funding and delivery of health care”. With the development of current healthcare system, it is observed that high average life expectancy and low rate of infant mortality is mainly leading to increased aging population and burden of chronic illness. The outdated organisation management is also unable to adapt to the rapid expansion of healthcare needs (Armstrong et al. 2007). In addition, chronic diseases also are one of the main issues and are mostly suffered by Indigenous communities. The lack of access to primary, acute and rehabilitation services are also identified from the interview. Therefore, it urgently requires the establishment of better links between fundamental healthcare services and Indigenous communities(Armstrong et al. 2007).
Because of limited resources outside of metropolitan areas, the health professionals are seen to be unwilling to work in those areas. Here, they cannot meet the criteria for social lives and their families. This affects their decision, as they cannot decide where to live and practise. This results in significant shortage of GP, dentist, nurses and others outside the metropolitan cities, especially in Indigenous communities. Therefore, it is important to develop innovative methods to attract health professionals for working in rural and remote areas.(Armstrong et al. 2007).
Education is the cornerstone for all health professional to provide safe and quality care to patients. Researchers have provided the fact that information that is acquired by people in university or the college gets expired in 5 years after graduation (Shahhosseini & Hamzehgardeshi 2015). Therefore, continuing education is important as it provides the chance for health professionals’ to update their knowledge, improve their skills and modify their thinking. However, as identified by Shahhosseini & Hamzehgardeshi (2015), heavy duties in the workplace, time constraints, lack of managers’ support, huge expenses and many others are among the reasons why nurses are unable to spend enough time in continuing education.
From the above discussion, it becomes evident that an effective leadership is required to deal with the challenges and issues that are faced by healthcare professionals in Australia.
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Personal Qualities: |
Behaviours: |
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Self-awareness |
Support staff |
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Empathy |
Act as a mentor-being a model for your team members |
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Positive attitude |
Continuing develop self and others |
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Ability to handle stress |
Motivation |
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Communication effectiveness |
The three most common factors that are required by individuals to portray effective leadership (identified by the interviewees) are acting as a mentor, helping in continuing education and develop effective communication skills.
One of the interviewee said:” When I want to seek advice or anything I am not sure, I do not know whom to ask as the leader is not here. At that time I feel helpless”.
When staffs have less contact with the leader, the leaders will have fewer opportunities to influence the former by using their leadership skills. Also, the followers do not have the scope to observe their leaders. Therefore, their gap in knowledge remains unattended. Therefore, it is crucial for healthcare organisation to understand that the most effective way to enhance the efficiency in workplace is developing visible and accessible leadership (Cummings et al. 2008). As Rolfe 2011 stated:” You have to be a visible role model, acting as a mentor and assisting follower to be leaders”.
This statement also supported by Daly, Speedy & Jackson 2015, as they identified that the mentor-protégé relationship is extremely important. It is a developmental relationship from where both mentor and protégé can get benefit from. Mentor must be available to the protégé all the time to provide unconditional support, honest feedback and be a role model. Protégé observes and interacts with mentor to improve competencies and this in turn increases job satisfaction. Meanwhile, mentor get safiscation by assisting followers in obtaining their career goals. This in turn enhances their own leadership traits. All the benefits that take place ultomately lead the organisation to be more productive. This also decreases staff turnover. Furthermore, lots of successful mentors employ transformational leadership style in which they are seen to motivate the subbordinates making them work beyond their potential and thereby help them in achieving their goals (Daly, Speedy & Jackson 2015).
“I think keeping on learning is a very important factor as it helps to promote the effectiveness of leadership. I always lack of self-confidence as I’m not sure my practice is the best or not. I feel that i still have lot to learn.” quoted from one of the interviewee.
Learning does not stop when people leave school. New and better strategies to care for patients are developed continuously. It is the professional’s responsibility to critically think and analyse the latest information, and make decisions whether the new strategies are better for the patient than current ones(Weiss & Tappen, 2015). Cumming et al. (2008) stated that higher education and experience leads to the increasing of leadership effectiveness. Continuing educational activities such as participating in leadership development programs demonstrates one of the most outstanding factor that contributes to boost effective leadership (Cummings et al. 2008). Daly, Speedy & Jackson (2015) also reported that most leaders look forward to renew and recharge themselves on a regular basis and this procedure helps them in reaching their objectives.
Effective leaders not only continue to develop and improve themselves but also motivate others to seek more knowledge like them. When leaders are learning and developing new skills, they should demonstrate, model and use these skills into workplace in order to increase the care quality and make the organisation more productive. They also declare that the leaders who have the transformational leadership style tend to align their subordinates towards continuing leadership education (Cummings et al., 2008) thereby enriching their lives as well.
“We are working in a highly interpersonal relationship-based environment. We are caring for people, interact with people and cooperate with people. So I think good communication skills are vital to achieve effective leadership.” quoted from one interviewee.
For leaders, effective communication is a key element of their role (Huber 2014). Weiss & Tappen 2015, stated that effective communication should include listening to others, stimulating information exchange and providing feedback. Listening is the only effective way to find out what other people wants and needs. Lots of leaders fail as they do not listen what the others are trying to tell them. Leaders also need to maintain the communication channels and make sure staffs are successfully using them to exchange information. This is because many misunderstandings and errors occur when people do not share enough imformation. Everyone needs to get feedback regarding their performance. Frequent honest feedback, no (irrespective of positive or negative), is needed to assist follower to improve their performance by pointing out their pros and cons.
Furthermore, leaders are in charge of developing vision, and this vision requires to be communicated as an attractive picture (Huber 2014). The effective leaders need to communicate this vision to the group and motivate them towards that vision (ACN 2015; Weiss and Tappen 2015). This action will generate inspiration that will boost followers in adhering to their goals when situation turns too difficult (Weiss and Tappen 2015). Moreover, if leaders can motivate the followers in creating the particular vision, this will make them more satisfied. They will develop the potential to be more creative and innovative in their work output (Weiss and Tappen 2015). Cummings et al. (2008) also stated that there is a positive relationship between the leader’s motivation and effective of leadership. In transformational leadership, leaders are more likely to communicate a vision, then motivate and influence the follower’s to adhere to the vision (Hutchinson & Jackson 2013).
In summary, as discussed above, the three common factors all contribute to enhance nursing leadership and these factors are all related to a particular leadership style – transformational leadership – that will be identified and discussed below.
The transformational leadership has been described as a leader who motivates and engages the followers to develop their skills and knowledge by influencing a change in perceptions and by creating a vision (Huber 2014). Daly, Speedy and Jackson (2015); Hutchinson and Jackson (2013) also supported that this leadership displays a human-capital-enhancing resource management style. Personal charisma, inspirational motivation, individualised consideration, and intellectual stimulation are four distinct factors of transformational leaders that help them to generate greater effort, effectiveness and satisfaction among followers.
In transformational leadership, communication is a vital section and it works by creating a vision to motivate and inspire followers and help them to move forward together. As described by Rolfe (2011),”transformational leaders are the communication champions and ambassadors for the organization’s vision”. Furthermore, Weiss & Tappen 2015 explained in more details that as transformational leaders can share their vision in a meaningful and exciting way, it can decrease the negative emotion and inspires commitment in followers. In addition, a successful transformational leader acts as a mentor to empower followers, and allows follower to grow and develop into future leaders. It is important to involve the followers in decision-making even in the smallest decision. This allows them to learn, get experiences and have some control over the process on how the goal is to be reached. As a result, the followers develop trust and a sense of belonging in the organisation. They feel valued and morally boosted (Rolfe 2011).
This healthy work relationship leads to increased staff loyalty, commitment, performance and job satisfaction with decreased absenteeism. Clearly, this leadership is a great strategy for staff recruitment and retention(Rolfe 2011).
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