Leadership

[anonymous]

Leadership is the determination to motivate a group or other employees in the direction for success for your organization or company. According to Jon Gordon, the author of, The power of leadership, he states, “Leadership is the ability of an individual or a group of individuals to influence and guide followers or other members of an organization” (2017). There can be leaders that are good leaders, and those that are considered bad leaders. A personal experience of leadership is with my current office manager. She defines what a good leader should do and how they should act. She always makes you feel welcome and open if there is ever an issue in the workplace or with another staff member. She also does a great job of keeping the facility in an organized fashion and effectively communicates any and all changes that happen inside the company. I am consistently watching how she operates in daily tasks so that I may use some of her good leadership traits and utilize them when I leave the company to pursue my career as a CEO. There are six important traits that a person should have in order to be an authentic leader. They include; “being open to suggestions, being understanding and compassionate, being motivational and inspire others, being humble, being an effective communicator, and finally, being aware of your leadership style” (Semaan, 2020). You need to stay open-minded and compassionate with other people no matter what the situation brings. You need to help inspire others to be successful and continuously keep an open line of communication with your staff. You also need to be humble. This can become important because you would not want to take the credit away from someone who did the work on a project but you want to make sure that everyone participates as well. These falls on a thin grey line between helping them too much versus not helping them at all. All of these traits are important to have in order to be a successful leader in the healthcare field. In addition, knowing what your leadership style is will aide in understanding how to approach difficult situations or subjects. An effective exercise that will help to develop these skills of being an authentic leader is to openly discuss you leadership style with your other colleagues. Once they understand your approach and how you handle particular situations, it will help to guide the issues at hand in the right direction for success. Doing this exercise on a weekly basis will also help other staff and employees understand how their leader operates. This is essential to know when discussing having meetings together or trying to converse about issues inside the organization. All successful companies and organizations start with their effective leaders and how they operate. Leadership is a vital aspect to every organization in healthcare and having a good and effective leader with all of the traits involved will determine if the company will be successful.

 

[DLanonymous]

Leadership as a discipline has been examined for well over a century. There have been differing theories over the years as to how one becomes a leader and what that entails. According to Benmira & Agboola (2021), there have been four specific periods regarding leadership theory. Great Man theory postulated that people were born to be leaders (Benmira & Agboola, 2021). This theory later converted into trait theories that were popular in the 1930s-1940s, which stated, “…the traits of successful leaders can be either inherited or acquired through training and practice” (Benmira & Agboola, 2021). From trait theories came behavioral theory, which took the position that leadership can be achieved by reinforcing particular actions; a person’s traits as well as the setting in which they lead was not considered to be of significance (Benmira & Agboola, 2021). It is this time where the concept of leadership styles came into focus (Benmira & Agboola, 2021). Situational theories were to follow after it was realized that the setting in which one leads does play a role in their leadership decision-making. The authors touched on the ideas of Fred Fiedler, which promoted a fixed leadership style that would be most effective when paired with a specific environment (Benmira & Agboola, 2021). Over the last twenty plus years, a focus on the relationships amongst the setting, the subordinates, and the leader has become more pronounced. This has led to the development of transformational, transactional, servant, and complexity leadership theories (Benmira & Agboola, 2021).

When we consider leadership in the specifics of health care, one can argue that the more recent theories in leadership would be more appropriate to use when defining a leader. Health care does not maintain a fixed position, and as such a fixed approach to leadership may not as appropriate as a flexible leadership style. According to Yukl (2008), “Research on leadership and management during the past several decades provide strong evidence that flexible, adaptive leadership is essential for most managers.” Health care leadership requires considering the different external and internal stakeholders encountered by the organization in their daily operations. A Hassan (2005) study looking to measure a healthcare organization’s performance found “While the leadership seems to focus on its external customers, not enough efforts are exerted to satisfy the needs and expectations of its internal customers.” The ability to do both effectively would be important for a health care leader.

When I take into consideration my personal experience of health care leaders under whom I have worked, I can recognize which of them had a stronger grasp of a flexible leadership style for which they also were able to meet the equal needs of internal and external stakeholders. A site manager for an outpatient physical therapy clinic where I was an exercise technician during my Physical Therapist Assistant studies displayed great leadership qualities. He kept open communication amongst all his staff both on an individual level as well as during staff meetings held at least once a month. We were able to communicate what barriers were impacting daily operations, as well as what concerns we thought may arise in the future. He would take them into genuine consideration when making decisions. He was able to maintain a high satisfaction amongst patients and their families, and that was no easy task as we were a very high-volume clinic which could easily have a dozen patients being seen on the therapy floor at one time.

It could be reasoned that successful health care leaders will have certain traits or qualities that will assist them in rising above the standard. The importance of flexibility cannot be underestimated, for multiple reasons. A flexible leader will be able to quickly assess what stands before them and which behavior will produce a desired outcome, regardless of the situation. As the ability to negotiate is a key skill for a leader when looking to achieve an organization’s goals, knowing what to give up to receive what’s wanted in return is important (Yukl, 2008). The concept of emotional intelligence being an important trait for leaders found more popularity after the 1995 publication of Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence. The importance of being able to understand the emotions of others and how that can be utilized the promote the success of an organization has found considerable importance amongst leaders when it comes time for them to fill leadership posts on their administration (Rubenstein, 2021).

The ability to develop these traits and skills for flexible leadership are significant to the organizations who employ them to achieve results. What training is available to develop them? A Balwant (2021) study created a two-step exercise whereby business students would perform a mock trial of a business event and then complete an essay providing their thoughts on the activity. The findings reported “…students’ perceived ability to apply flexible leadership improved significantly, and they also showed improved self-awareness of their use of flexible leadership” (Balwant, 2021). This type of exercise is appealing in that it required the students to take immediate self-reflection in their decisions and whether they would have acted different in hindsight. This will allow them to further harness their ability to identify the situation in front of them and what behaviors may be required for the outcome needed more succinctly. As the exercises can have students or employees work through different scenarios that may look to affect emotional intelligence, adaptability, or negotiating strengths, one can see how it would be beneficial to developing authentic leadership traits.

The understanding of leadership has certainly changed over the years. Where at one time it was thought that leadership was only bestowed upon a select few at birth, we now understand it to be more complex and influenced by multiple factors. There suggests being an appreciation for flexible leadership style as one more preferred for today’s health care industry. While not all leaders will have the same level of flexibility, I can say from my experience that those who demonstrated the best understanding of this style had the best outcomes for all involved stakeholders. It reminded me of a DLanonymous (2021) quote: “It’s only the best leaders who know how to get that extra 1% out of you when you are already giving 100%. It’s because you see them giving 110%.”

 

[henry85]

Nice Thoughts!