Leadership Theories in Healthcare: Group Decision Making (Essay Sample)

Leadership Theories in Healthcare
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Leadership styles are methods that a leader uses to provide direction, employee motivation and implementation of plans of people. There are a lot of leadership styles and theories that one can use in political, business and other fields. One such theory is situational leadership.
In situational leadership, a leader does not have a distinct style to use when doing various tasks. There are some of the factors that a leader should consider before coming up with a solution to problems he is facing. Some of the factors that affect situational decisions are motivation and capability of the followers. For this kind of leadership to be effective in the organization the relationship between the organization and followers is crucial. That makes the leader develop a perception that is positive so as to make a decision that will be of benefits to both parties. Thus, stress and mood modify how a leader behaves in a particular situation.
Situational leadership has aspects that clearly show the definition of leadership (Hersey, 2009). A good leader should be flexible, interact well with the followers and encourage group decision making. That is what entails situational leadership. It is where a leader should not be rigid in the decisions and required to consider the influence of the followers in making decisions.
Considering many requirements of this type of leadership, there is much leadership strengths and weaknesses I have as a leader of the healthcare institution. Hersey and Blanchard’s give an approach where they state four basic foundations of effective leadership. These are participating, delegating, coaching and directing. In the case of directing the leader should occupy a "does this" position at the workplace. He focuses more on tasks other than their relationship with the employees. In coaching, the leads should have skills of clarifying and explaining the job requirements. The supportive role needs to be put in exercise especially when the there is the refusal of employees to perform the work where the leader takes the role of persuading. That helps in understanding the de-motivating factors at the work. Once there is proper coaching then delegation is necessary.
Referring to the above specifications, I find it easier to manage my followers because of having strengths such as competent, task and relationship focus, adaptable and being cooperative (Schmid, 2006). However, it is sometimes difficult to provide proper leadership due to stress and mood swings which pose a significant weakness to me. Having positive perception and attitude is helpful in developing a decision that takes in considerations all elements of decision making. That improves the external relationship, resource acquisition and manages demands of various groups. At times in my leadership role, I find it difficult to implement the strategies due to variations in the moods and stress. It is also challenging in the use of my experience because there are times when the decisions I make do not correspond to my experience. A significant contribution to this weakness is the fact that situational leadership is dynamic, and all leaders should be up-to-date with major environmental changes to make a decision.
There are a lot of characteristics that I possess and remain valid in all my duties. For instance the self-motivation, dominance, emotional stability, social boldness and being compulsive. Self-motivation encourages me to continue consistently administering leadership irrespective how pervasive the situation portrays. Social boldness gives me a chance to interact with external environment appropriately by avoiding the existing negative perceptions that exist in the society. Dominance brings the aspect of control and management that are vital to the achievement of organizational goals.
However, there are two key essential leadership characteristics which I would like to develop. They are creativity and intuition. Creativity helps in making decisions that are not clear-cut. It gives the leader a good reputation of being a problem-solver to issues that employees are unable to solve. Intuition involves providing proper leadership to a team so as to solve decisions that seem to be of high risks and uncertain in their outcomes. It provides a situation where employees approach the leader for guidance in dealing with tough decisions. As a leader, therefore, I need to have trust in myself, and that will motivate the employees as well.
Healthcare is a field that is very dynamic. Leaders should be creative and have a proper natural intuition to help in coming with solutions to the problems in the field. Having the two characteristics will be of relevance in managing the manpower, educating them on recent changes, informing and influencing them positively in their position.
Medical profession requires a lot of customer focus and maintenance of a favorable environment for service delivery to please the parties. Compromise of these factors will lower down the reputation of the profession, and all patients would feel dissatisfied, and that makes the community not to have a cordial relationship.
In health care, there are some principles of ethics whose importance is indisputable. The employees in the area need to provide quality service to patients, protect information of patients, promote the healthcare quality, report data with integrity and enhance interdisciplinary cooperation and collaboration. The application of these ethics in the situation leadership is straightforward. In many cases, the medics will have many patients with different problems which require different approaches. Interdisciplinary cooperation helps in seeking technical advice on issues that have a relationship with other professionals. Confidentiality is important as it ensures that the patients do not receive any form of discrimination from the society as well as alienation.
There is still a chance for improvement in the area ...