Analysis of Healthcare Leadership - Essay Example

Healthcare Leadership affiliation   Healthcare Leadership In the healthcare sector, the provision of quality healthcare has always been a key point of concern. The reason is that in healthcare, the lives of patients and their future lie in the hands of hospital practitioners like doctors, nurses and the support staff. All of these fragments of the hospital structure work together in liaison with the administration to ensure that quality service is provided to better the lives of the patients. To achieve quality; however, flexible and appropriate leadership styles need to be applied to ensure that the whole hospital structures coordination effects service provision. To bring about this quality also requires effective leadership styles that aim to address any resistances to change and flexibility. In leadership, understanding the application and development of leadership theories prepares a healthcare manager in his tasks of predicting, explaining ad controlling operations. I challenge the validity of Kumar’s support for the transformational style of leadership and propose that the contingency style of leadership is the best option for ensuring change through the engagement of those resistant to it. Good leadership in health care has increasingly become a major issue as stakeholders have made the realization that through effective leaders, institutional change can occur. Robin Kumar in Leadership and Healthcare proposes that the transformational style is most effective in leadership since it attracts followers to own change. Kumar (2013) writes that in transformational leadership, the leader inspires people through his passion, enthusiasm and vision. Under this type of leadership, the leader becomes a change agent as he/she places the needs of others before themselves. However, I am of the opinion that this type of leadership, especially in healthcare, is very destructive since where leaders have trust in their followers, chaos is bound to erupt. The contingency theory offers a remedy to such chaos as it provides that the leader utilizes the followers per their attributes and strengths. Contingency is bound to bring a streamlining of activities in healthcare institutions as each employee’s most positive attribute is tapped for the overall aim of quality promotion. In Organizational Behavior in Healthcare, contingency is defined as a type of leadership whereby the one recognizes that an unexpected event might occur and therefore a plan to tackle it should be put in place (Borkowski 2005). Especially in healthcare, a leader should always be prepared for uncertainties like disasters that may call for the use of unconventional responses. Lombardi and his counterparts write that instead of institution administrators focusing on the search for one perfect style of leadership, there is a need to match a leader’s personal style and situational demands (Lombardi, Schermerhorn, Kramer, 2007). They write that the contingency, which was proposed by Fred Fiedler, recognizes that an individual’s personality is hard to change. Unlike transformational leadership that requires that people get inspired to transform, contingency provides for the matching of individual style and situations within which they best match. Contingency leadership is best since it increases subordinate satisfaction and the overall performance during situational leadership (Yulk 2006). Contingency ensures that the whole leadership process is aware of the new trends (through professionals) since consultations exist between persons with relevant knowledge. The writers of Health Care Management write that in order to diagnose leadership, a leader should understand the three major three variables of the contingency theory (Lombardi, Schermerhorn and Kramer 2007). The first variable is the quality of leader-member relations (good/poor). Quality measures the degree of support that the leader has in the group. In hospital scenarios, this could mean the level of reverence, certainty, and trust that exists between the two parties. The higher the ratings, the more the responsibility and the lesser the supervision done. This type of relationship focus ensures that the leader can reach the followers who are resisting change by ensuring that they can see his/her visions and gauge them. The other variable is thedegree of the task structure; it may be either high or low. Task structure can be evaluated to determine the extent of stipulations of goals, procedures, and guidelines for the institution. These include the levels of stipulations in policy and the allocated responsibilities for the workers. The last variable is the amount of leader position power. This variable studies the degree of the leader’s jurisdiction or power over his subordinates in terms of rewards or punishments. Social psychologist define power as the level of mandate that is given to a leader as he performs his tasks (Fielder 1986). In essence, contingency ensures that a leader’s efficiency and traits face either nullification or enhancement depending on how they handle situational variables. The three core elements of the structural contingency theory are the environment, organizational structure, and performance. The environment (task environment) refers to anything and everything that influences the immediate achievement of an organization’s goal (Anderson and Srinivasan 2003). In healthcare, these factors would include the technology (state of the art), competitors, customers and sources of finance. Such scenarios are affected by uncertainties that may arise from the lack of sufficient knowledge about patients entering the ECU per week/day. Contingency plays a pivotal role in addressing such uncertainties as the leader/shift manager can use his subordinate leaders to manage their individual sectors to ensure reciprocity. Contingency guarantees that individual units have an autonomy that further reflects on the general organizational performance. The bottom-up administrationof all unit levels in an organization promotes the overall organizational quality of care. The organizational quality of care is the degree to which a customer/patient-centered care process takes place regardless of the medical outcomes (Davies, Nutley and Mannion 2000). One measure of quality is the waiting time for patients to be seen by their care providers. A contingency type of leadership is effective in management and especially when an improvement of wait timeis being considered. A leader using the contingency type of leadership is able to initiatechange in an organization. The leader can ensures change through the evaluation and assessment of individual worker abilities. The evaluation serves to guide the decisions of delegationand replacement of workersto guaranteethat the overall quality of service is improved. A major advantage of the contingency theory is that it influences change depending on the existing factors in the environment. As a result, the leader might influence change depending on his followers’ potential of flexibility. Unlike the transformational style of leadership, contingency does not force those opposed to change but alternatively introduces possibilities that enable the tapping of qualities. A leader using contingency theory does not flourish on smooth talk and visionary statements but works on a calculated move that ensures that the right employee performs a task. Also, unlike transformational leadership, where change is led by the leader himself, in contingency theory change begins with individual employees. Furthermore, unlike the theoretical trust in employees propagated by transformation, contingency theory ensures that leaders can give their employees specific tasks that they prove themselves through implementation. Furthermore, the esteem given to the leader-follower relationship ensures that both parties can work towards a balance that will counter any upcoming challenges that might arise in the course of duty. A major strength of the contingency theory of leadershipis that it is predictable and includes parameters of evaluation. Unlike other theories where the realization of impacts delay, contingency provides that, a leader most suited for duty be tasked with undertaking it. The high structuring of tasks ensures that the leader’s involvement is minimal and that the quality of services is higher (Gupta 2009). Furthermore, contingency ensures that leadership goals are not compromised as the leader performs either exceptionally or poorly. For any healthcare institution, evaluation forms a strong basis for promotion or demotion since in healthcare poor performance costs lives and vice versa (Wong and Cummings 2007). In the end, contingency improves patient outcomes as only the most suited/best workers operate on the patients. In conclusion, it is evident that there is no one perfect way of managing institutions or organizations. A leader needs to be open to all factors that include the environment and circumstances under which the operations are being undertaken. The contingency type of leadership addresses this problem as it ensures that the leader is considerate towards his followers and that they can initiate a structure that will meet all of the set goals. A contingent leader builds a good rapport and also initiates a structure that delegates and performs different roles that are interdependent. In the end, these roles work towards the success of the whole organization. The contingency theory, unlike transformational, is best suited for the healthcare sector since it ensures that the leader can adapt to new situations that are most frequent in the unpredictable healthcare sector. Through contingency leadership, every leader can face new challenges and overcome those while still ensuring that the organization meets all the quality requirements. References Anderson, R. E., & Srinivasan, S. S. (2003). E-satisfaction and e-loyalty: a contingency framework. Psychology and Marketing, 20(2), 123-138. Borkowski, N. (2015). Organizational behavior in health care. Jones & Bartlett Publishers. Davies, H. T., Nutley, S. M., &Mannion, R. (2000). Organizational culture and quality of health care. Quality in Health Care, 9(2), 111-119. Fiedler, F. E. The contribution of cognitive resources to leadership performance. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, vol. 16 (1986). pp. 532–545. Gupta. A. 25 April 2009. Contingent Leadership. Practical Management. Available from http://www.practical-management.com/Leadership-Development/Contingent-Leadership.html Kumar, R. D. (2013). Leadership in healthcare. Anaesthesia& Intensive Care Medicine, 14(1), 39-41. Lombardi, D. J., Schermerhorn, J. R., & Kramer, B. (2007). Health care management. Wiley. Wong, C. A., & Cummings, G. G. (2007). The relationship between nursing leadership and patient outcomes: a systematic review. Journal of nursing management, 15(5), 508-521. Yukl, G. (2006c). Early Contingency Theories of Effective Leadership in Leadership in Organizations(6th ed., pp. 214-215): Prentice Hall Upper SaddleRiver, Read More