Leadership Change In Healthcare Organization: Critical Analysis And Results

Functional Style of Leadership

Leadership has been perceived as a pattern of behavior exhibited by an individual who is in charge of leading a group in order to attain a positive goal (Al-Sawai, 2013). Leadership involves two vital aspects of human behavior that can be stated as the ability to adjust with a change and the ability to perform within a group, maintaining the spirit of unity. It is important to note that leadership can be of various types depending upon the concerned operational setting however research studies have only talked about the pattern of leadership in a business environment. This accounts for the reason why leadership policies in health care organizations mostly have not been able to yield drastic improvements in terms of patient outcomes and improved service delivery (Kumar, 2013). The essence of a good leadership is reflected by the spirit of unity working in a team and the keenness to assimilate new ideas and work unitedly to achieve the vision or the goal set by the team. This essay would talk about the existing scenario in the current organization that I work for, where recently a change in terms of administration operation was incorporated. The essay would delve deeper into the critical analysis of the reaction of the workforce and the evaluation of the degree of success of the implemented change. It is necessary to mention here that the process of leadership is dynamic in any service sector and the growth of an organization is likely to be dependent upon the pattern of leadership existing in the organization.

The medical health organization that I have been working for initially was built upon the functional style of leadership. The characteristic feature of this leadership can be summarized as the leader prioritizes the requirements that are to be met so that the goal or the target is achieved (Martin & Waring, 2013). This scheme of leadership mainly considers the requirements to be fulfilled, the requirement of the team members and the individuals present in the team (Wong et al., 2013). This leadership has its own advantages however the leadership lacks a primary focus (Motola et al., 2013). The problem that my organization was facing with this type of leadership was that there was a huge communication gap. The major problem was that on admitting a patient the nursing professionals were all assigned tasks instead of a fixed job responsibility. There were many instances, when the nurses were overloaded with work pressure because they were assigned multiple tasks. Patients who are the primary customers in a hospital set up must be placed in a healthy environment in order to make them feel healthy and ensure a quick recovery (Trastek et al., 2014). However, the patients piled up complaints against the ongoing system in the hospital. The complaints stated that they felt uncomfortable on being attended by different professionals every day. Additionally, the organization lacked a support cell and the primary care providers of the patients who were the family members were utterly confused with the treatment procedure. They did not know whom to approach in case of a critical emergency of the patient. There was no system of patient counseling process where the entire treatment would be explained in an elaborate manner to the patient as well as the respective family members. Confused patients and their respective care providers resorted to the known faces of the hospital to get their queries resolved. This created a fuss and as a result the client generated negative feedback about the hospital and also due to the work burden, the organization also faced severe issues in the form of employee turnover.

Issues Faced by Organization

To address the critical scenario, the decision to undertake a major change was taken. The decision was taken after several rounds of the assessment of the internal environment of the hospital and meeting with the board members. The employees were also made aware of the process through team meetings. The change was basically the shift from the primary style of leadership operation to a more focused transformational type of leadership. This was done by introducing the primary nursing care for the patients that means that the patients who were admitted were placed under the care of a team of primary nurses where each professional had a specific job role to perform (Braun et al., 2013). The team was responsible for caring for the patient throughout the stay in the hospital. The change initially witnessed a lot of resistance from the employee workforce. The employees possessed a divided opinion on the validity of the change as has already been described that a change in a present system is bound to elicit resistance (Tomkins et al., 2015). The supervisors complained that the change was unnecessary and it was only questioning their capability of being a team lead. The various teams witnessed conflicts too. On many occasions the senior professionals intentionally over loaded the junior nurses with tasks that they did not like such as documentation or helping the elderly patients or the indigenous patients with daily activities such as bathing or daily grooming. The junior nurses felt dominated but were not able to question the orders as the previous system had no fixed responsibility allotted to any designation. The transformational leadership is based on excellent flow of communication and in addition to the same sticking to the ethical clause of leadership (Avolio & Yammarino, 2013). The ethical clause include motivating the team in order to perform at critical situations, inculcating a spirit of acceptance of the change so as to contribute positively to the organization and cultivate the spirit of ethical conduct so as not to favor a specific group of individuals (Demirtas & Akdogan, 2015). The change was implemented for a time period of 12 months but the change seeped into the system appropriately after a period of two months of implementation. The evaluation of the effectiveness of the change was noted through the feedback of the workforce as well as the clients. After a period of six months the customer complaints in terms of maladministration and mismanagement went down by an impressive 25%. The organization witnessed a heavy flow of clients and the professionals worked with a better team spirit, motivation and an organized work life. The employees said that the change helped them in expanding their horizons of growth and the smooth flow of communication helped drastically. The modified organizational structure had helped them build on their professional experience by providing a platform to interact with experienced leaders and shaping up their decision making ability.

Conclusion:

Hence, to conclude in this context it can be said that the change in the leadership pattern yielded positive results. The strategies that were undertaken in order to introduce this change comprised of the consideration of the organizational policy, the adaptability of the employees and the expected outcome of implying the change. Although, the essay critically elaborates the process of change and the associated behavioral pattern linked to it and the compliance of the transformational leadership was found to be best suited to regulate the administration of the organization but also the ethical principles of leader was stringently considered. It must be critically acknowledged here that the proper functioning and the performance output of a team is dependent upon the traits and qualities of an efficient leader. The leader must possess the unique skills of motivating the employees and at the same time develop the skill set of the employees under him in the most humble yet firm manner. Thus, the transformational style of leadership in compliance with the ethical considerations seem to be appropriate for a healthcare organization on the basis of the change that my organization underwent recently pertaining to the faulty administration scheme that encouraged poor quality of service delivery and obstruction in the flow of communication.

References:

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