Leadership In Health Care Behaviour

The Characteristics of an Ideal Team Leader in a Heath Care Organization

Discuss about the Leadership in Health Care Behaviour.

According to Schein (2010), leadership can be considered as the behaviour of an individual who has the potentiality to direct the activities of a group to the shared goal. The key responsibilities of a leader may involve promoting team work as well as influencing positive energy in order to keep pace with the changes. While implementing leadership style in health care settings, it is found that most theories were not developed supporting the health care system. According to Selznick (2011), the leaders of health care system possess some special characteristics, which are unique to support the environment of the health care system. An ideal health care system is consisting of numerous departments. Professional groups as well as specialties nonlinear and intricate interactions between them. Therefore, it can be said that the leaders in the health care organization should have the experience to work in a diversified working environment and have the quality to promote positive energy in the organization culture. According to Wheatley (2010), it is found that due to the presence of huge diversity and subcultures within the organization, it becomes complicated to control all of the workers in the health care organization under one leader. Therefore, the leader should be recruited to lead individual groups of the health care organization with their unique leadership skills. It is the responsibility of a health care leader to use the resources in a proper way and guide the nurses and other health care personals to maintain the working spirit within the health care organization and offer their best care toward the patients.

The characteristics of an ideal team leader in a heath care organization

According to Aaker & Joachimsthaler (2012), it is found that different types of leadership approaches can be adopted by the leaders of the health care system. The various types of leadership styles can be summed as transformational leadership, collaborative leadership, distributed leadership, shared leadership and transactional leadership. Among all these types of leadership styles, it is recognized that transformational leadership is one of the best styles that can be followed by the leaders in a health care system to increase positive energy within the organization and influence the health care workers to merge their personal goals with the organization’s goal. According to the study of Raelin (2011), it is recognized that an effective tea leader of the health care system should have unique characteristics that influence the team members as well as co-workers to follow him or her. Although it is noticed that all types of leaders posses certain qualities, the leaders in the health care system should posses some unique characteristics. The characteristics that should be possessed by the health care leaders are as follows

Potential Consequences of Poor Leadership Being Demonstrated by the Team Leader

• Communication: As an effective team leader the leader of the health care organization should communicate clearly without any ambiguity. The leader should have excellent verbal as well as written communication skills. It is better if the leader is comfortable to communicate in more than one language.
• Organization: As an effective team leader the leader of the health care organization need to posses great organization skills in order to develop ideal strategies in order to encourage the team members to perform optimally (Ward, 2011). An ideal team leader put efforts to organize the team and motivate them to meet the company’s goal.
• Confidence: A quality team leader should have confidences on his ability as well as on the team members. A confident leader always makes decisions that can increase the efficiency of the team. A self-confident team leader can also increase the confidence level among the team members.
• Respectful: A quality team leader is always respectful towards the team members (Avolio & Yammarino, 2013). A respectful team leader is always helpful to empower the employees by considering the ideas given by the team members.
• Fair: According to Zhang & Bartol (2010), it is found that a quality team leader should treat the team members fairly. A respectful leader should take disciplinary action to control the team. On the other hand, rewards and recognition play an important role to retain the nurses in the organization. Fair leaders in a health care organization always try to evaluate the performances of the team members and recognize them.
• Integrity: According to Denis et al. (2010), it is found that a quality team leader is always honest his or her team members. Leaders who have integrity become a trust worthy of the team members, which influences positive energy in the system. Therefore, the leader of a health care system should possess integrity.
• Influential: Influential leaders inspire the team members to commit their best for the organization. Influential leaders in the health care system are always valued for their motivation skills.
• Delegation: An ideal leader always knows “how to share leadership through delegation.” Leaders with delegation power are proved as helpful to improve the structure of the health care organization.
• Facilitator: A quality team leader in health care organization is always an effective Facilitator, who understands to the goal of the organization and facilitates the team members to achieve their personal goals as well as the organizational goal Berwick & Hackbarth (2012).
• Independent thinker: An ideal team leader should be an independent thinker and have a vision in order to keep pace with the continuously changing health care environment.
• Positive towards the change: According to Ford & Harding (2011), the environment of a health care system is always changing with the extensive growth of science and technology.
• Depth knowledge about the disease and patient care: In order to improve the quality care offered by the organization it is important that the leaders of the heath care system should posses a deep knowledge about the patient care and diseases.

According to Chullen et al. (2010), “Good leadership is like the light, permeating into every aspect of the business; and poor leadership is like the shadow, darkening many areas of the organization.” It is found from the study of Flodgren et al. (2011), that the existence of poor leadership can destroy the healthy environment of an organization. A health care organization is a set up where the leaders play a key role to enhance the quality of services and relief the patients as well as their families as much as possible. However, it is found that the consequences of poor leadership are not only harmful to the sustainability of a health care system but also affect the health of the patients. As opined by Martin & Learmonth (2012), some problems can occur in the organization. It is found that poor leadership can be a result of lack of vision or misleading of the leaders. It is found that the leaders should have vision so that they can guide the team members to reach the goal of the organization as well as accomplishing personal targets. If the leader lacks the vision and does not know about the goal of the organization, it is found that the leader fails to guide the team members to achieve the organization’s target. Lack of strong leadership will also affect the efficiency level of the workers. This is because without a proper vision and guidance the work will be accomplished by the workers mechanically but not with “intelligent direction” towards a common goal.

On the other hand, it is also found that poor leadership in an organization can cause gaps between the development of a strategy to reach the organization’s target and the execution of the strategy in an effective way. According to the study of Huber (2013), it is found that most of the managers in the organization who posses poor leadership skills can cause this gap between the strategy development and the implementation of the strategy in the work place environment. The researchers also proved that the poor leadership can also cause gap as they only “like” some selective people and rely on them for the execution of the strategy, which is not desirable for the growth of an organization. Poor leadership style coupled with poor and homogeneous team setting can result in the cognitive gap within the organization, and the productivity or the service qualities are compromised (Cummings et al., 2010). Further, it is recognized that an ideal leader always considers the opinions of the team members but the ‘poor’ leaders either tries to avoid them or keep promising them to consider their opinions or suggestions. On the other hand, it is also recognized that poor leadership style in an organization can be considered as the root of the culture of mediocrity.

Impact of Poor Leadership in a Health Care Organization

The ideal leaders try to motivate the fellow team members to improve their performances even if their performances are not deteriorating. However, the poor leaders never pay attention to the performances of the team members and rarely think about the improvement of the skills of the team members. A leader not only contributes to building an idea team but also contributes to developing a better organization culture that can keep pace with the changing environment and the technologies. Sometimes the poor leaders do not recognize the performances of the team members over some particular “favorites.” Due to this partiality the working environment and the spirit of the working culture get hurt. According to Hunziker et al. (2011), it is noticed that the increasing number of employee turnover takes place due to the poor leadership, which is not good for the growth or development of an organization or a particular company. Poor leadership always have an impact on almost every area of business. Several issues can generate within an organization due to poor leadership, such as employee retention issue, decreasing attachment of the employees in the organization, scaling issues, morale as well as the low employee performances.

Although an organization can experience different types of problems due to poor leadership style, it is found that the impact of the poor leadership on the employees also needs to be considered. The impact of poor leadership on the employees may include rising of confusion and misunderstanding among the workers as well as between the management personals. The poor leadership can also loosen the bond between the employees of the organization as well as the goal of the organization. According to Marshall (2010), one of the most common effects of poor leadership in an organization are employee dissatisfaction and employee turnover.

The services offered by any health care organization in the developed world are so important that the government of every country always focus on the development of the heath care centre. However, it is found that the effort of the governments is nothing but futile when the leaders of the organizations are not following “ideal leadership style.” According to Liechty (2011), a health care organization is considered as the corner stone of the society. Therefore, the degrading condition of a health care organization also effects the society. It is also evident from researches that poor leadership can cause the degradation of the health care system. The difficulties that could be experienced by any health care system due to poor leadership style are as follows-

• Miscommunication among the employees: According to Weaver et al. (2010), it is found that due to poor leadership style, miscommunication among the nurses and the midwives are very common, which can cause serious trouble to the treatment of the patients. The wrong dosage of medicines and other treatments due to miscommunication can lead to the death of the patient.
• High turnover among the nurses: It is found that due to poor leadership skill the employee dissatisfaction takes place, which results in the huge turnover number of an organization.
• Lack of motivation: Due to poor leadership skill it is found that most of the employees feel de-motivated and contribute to the increasing of employee turnover.
• Poor nursing skills: If the leader does not possess profound knowledge about the skills and the expertise about patient care and patient treatment, he or she will fail to guide the fellow nurses to improve their quality care. Therefore, the poor leadership style can hamper the nursing skills of a health care organization.
• Poor service quality: Due to poor leadership, a health care organization can experience de-motivation among the employees, poor nursing skills as well as miscommunications among the staffs and the nurses, which will inevitably have a negative impact on the service quality offered by the organization. According to Flodgren et al. (2011), it is found that the reason behind the poor service offered by the health care organization is poor leadership style.

Leadership is considered as one of the strongest characteristics of a person, which hep him or her to be established in life and contribute to the development of a company, an organization or the society. Although leaders perform their duties to lead their teams based on their knowledge and acquired skills, it is important to analyze the leadership style. The leadership analysis is count as an art of analyzing leaders into basic “psychological components.” The leadership analysis is used by the practitioners as well as by the academics. Good leadership analysis is helpful to improve the quality of a leader. According to Huber (2013), psychological tools can be used by the academics in order to evaluate leadership in a proper way. One of the best leadership analysis tools is applied analysis, which primarily focused on developmental, personality and psychoanalytic theories that also includes early experiences and role models. The academic leadership analysis may be composed of verbal categories, motivation assessments, trait assessment, conceptual complexity, motivation assessment and operational coding. All of the leadership analysis tools may be consists of a chart of close-ended questions. Through answering this series of questions, the analyst can calculate the score and interpret the data. The questions are formed by focusing on several characteristics such as personal characteristics of the leader, self-confidence of the leader, positive attitude as well as outlook, and the emotional intelligence of the leaders.

Conclusion

After analyzing the leadership skills and its importance in the organization’s settings, it can be said that the role played by the leaders are not only important for the organization’s development but also its growth and sustainability. Based on the evidence showed by the researchers it is found that the organization culture and the work efficiency of the health care organizations are hugely dependent n the leadership skills of the health care personals. After analyzing the leadership theories, it is recognized that the transformational leadership style is the best leadership style that can be acquired by the health care personals. On the other hand, it is also found that the poor leadership skill can have a deep impact on the sustainability and the quality of services offered by a health care organization. Therefore, in order to improve the quality services of a health care organization, it is important to acquire a leadership style, which is appropriate for that particular health care setting.

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