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Leadership in Health and Social Care Essay
Introduction
Today’s vibes in healthcare organisation requires individuals who are creative, flexible, and able to empower others to be creative and flexible. Many leadership issues are the same regardless of industry, but the healthcare industry presents many unique issues (Robinson, 2005 cited in Mechanic, 2005, p53). The relationships, life-and-death nature of the work, emotional demands, and service delivery challenges with much shortage of managed care, higher client acuity, fewer resources, highly diverse demographics, and outside influences in this industry, make it very different from those in other fields.
Because of these unique issues, healthcare practitioners need to be more effective leaders than ever as they manage clients in various settings. Regarding that, this essay will critically analyze my leadership role and style in health and social care practice and how this may be developed to enhance client care. This essay will discuss the concept of leadership in health and social care in my practice, the impact of organisational culture on my personal effectiveness, the key leadership qualities required to meet current challenges in my practice and how it will enhance my personal effectiveness, my team and client care.
Body
The development of health and social care organisations in service sector industries
The development of health and social care organisations in service sector industries require an uptight need for mounting efficiency in the concept of leadership. In my opinion, upon my working experience in rehabilitative services, leadership can be defined as the process of envisioning a new and better world, communicating that vision to others, motivating others and enticing them to join in efforts to realize the vision, thinking in a different way, challenging the status quo, taking risks, and facilitating change (Grossman and Valiga, 2005, p45).
Leadership has evolved from theories of the past, which pronounced that only great and noble men could be leaders, to more current theories that look at leadership as a learned process or a changing role depending on the situation (Ilies et al., 2004, p207-19). Organisation strategies are drawn from both leadership and management theories and it involves both the leader and the follower (Burns et al., 2004, p840).
As the integration of multitasking operational processes and clinical assessment results in an improvement in client care outcomes (Graham, 1995, p120-121), valid development in the client care practice initiates by leadership construction and institutes a legitimate for initiating a patient care improvement.
In this subject, health and social care leaders, lead and manage care for clients and communities in a variety of settings. They also lead and manage care across the healthcare continuum, including primary health promotion and prevention, secondary skilled, long term, rehabilitative and tertiary: emergent, urgent, and acute care. Meanwhile, effective followers are entities who support and work with health care leaders. They are individuals who are engaged, suggest new ideas, share criticisms with the leader, and invest time and energy in the work of the group, uphold constructive interaction within the group, and stand in as potential “leaders-in-waiting” in health and social care legacy (Pittman et al., 1998, p118).
Morgan et al. (2005, p110-118) suggest that management is regarded with taking resources collectively, mounting strategies, planning, organizing, controlling and coordinating activities with the aim realize agreed missions. The approach of health and social care towards leadership and management reflects the dynamic state of social and health care practice. Management has evolved from competing for health and social care managerial activities in a hierarchical, bureaucratic organization to complexity theory involving both health and social sciences.
Therefore, health and social civilizing, and ecological context have to be deposited within the concept of leadership that has been adopted in the organization. I consider that all therapists must be looked to as leaders in and for the profession. In leading the Neuro-Spinal Rehabilitation team in my organisation, I have my role and responsibility in setting the team’s goals and built up the teamwork spirit among members. I also lead the team by being a decision maker, team delegator and mentor for the junior staffs.
Rehabilitative services, a major component of a health-care organisations
Rehabilitative services are a major component of a health-care organisation, and it is important to understand the organisation culture in which to provide effective personal leadership quality in rehabilitative care. Organisational culture can be defined as the assumptions and beliefs that organisational members have in common. It is the “shared values and beliefs within the organisation” (Huber, 2000, p437). The culture of the organisation contains the norms that characterize the environment (Sleutel, 2000, p53-8). The culture consists of things that are not written down but are known by all members, which affects the outcomes of quality for the organisation.
The culture is learned through the relationship between behaviors and the consequences (Jones and Redman, 2000, p604-10). Working in the medical centre of choice which serves the global community, surely have a strong value set, mission, vision, and philosophy in order to meet ever-changing events and the needs of our clients. Staff was repeatedly reminded that the organisation has a vision and mission of delivering quality tertiary services and best care to the client. Appraisal was vital and we were supervised. Our performance determined our promotions, increment, and year on year bonuses.
Straightforwardly, these principles generated a competitive culture between staff to strive and earn as much as we can without jeopardising the care of the clients. The working mood was conducive and work satisfaction was far above the ground. The interpersonal bond was pleasant in manner, open and constructed on mutual respect. Kouzes and Posner (1990, p29) affirm that good leadership arrives from within one’s values, sense of integrity and trustworthiness. Teamwork, respect, comradeship, empathy, honesty, loyalty and integrity were the values projected in our department culture.
Russell (2001, p76) believed that good values yield a great form of leadership. With the intention of establishing transformational leadership practices, as a leader, I have to scan my own self-awareness and a plan for self-development. This positive self-regard satisfies my self-esteem, and needs and will result in “self-confidence, worth, strength, capability, adequacy, and being useful and necessary” (Barker, 1990, p159). By establishing this form of leadership, I will have a better relationship with my team (Morrison et al., 1997, p27-34).
Transformational leadership was positively related to empowerment. Thus, as ‘the most senior among junior’ staff in my department, indirectly I will set an example for the juniors to follow. I understand that initially, I should strengthen my personal values before giving good quality organisational values to my followers. All these elements that have been mentioned, help me as a leader to understand my work environment.
I myself as a leader and also other therapists need to be knowledgeable and comfortable within the culture and the climate of the organisation. Our organisation is improving in the work environment through shared governance and magnet status for the therapists. This provides autonomy and demonstrates the importance of my personal leadership effectiveness in a professional practice environment that has been offered by my organisation.
Leaders keep the organisation continually moving forward by looking for ways to improve while managing the goals of the organisation. As to describe the importance of key leadership qualities required in order to meet current challenges within my practice, I need to outlook myself as a leader, build-up my leadership capacity, and hold the obstacles that have been faced (Grossman and Valiga, 2005, p122). Communication and teamwork issues have been often cited as shortcomings in the health-care system.
Many of the problems that occur within teams are the direct result of people failing to work in a team (Kaissi et al., 2003, p211-18) and communicate effectively (Maxfield et al., 2005). In my team, there are individuals that tend to work outside the team’s globe. Those individuals always put into account the differences occurring among the team members, refused to take clients that had been referred and did not take part in any team brainstorming and team meeting.
Those individuals display a lack of trust, a lack of tolerance for healthy conflict, and a lack of passionate commitment to the organization. There are also problems of miscommunication. This always happens especially on the issue of the client’s treatment appointment which leads to incompetence in rehabilitation service delivery.
Importance of formal and informal key leadership qualities in rehabilitation
As a leader in the rehabilitation team, I should develop varied formal and informal key leadership qualities, which involve team building, communication, negotiation, delegation, and mentorship in order to lead and manage the challenges successfully. As a leader, I must be able to work as a team builder. I should develop a mission and goals of the organisation to unify the team and should reflect the goals of the team.
There is also a need for me to set ground rules. I agreed that members need to know expectations for structure and behavior. Ground rules that were considered most important included, clear expectations for time, place and attendance of meetings, communication, collaboration, and mutual respect among members.
For example, through the use of attractors, I can help the team focus and move forward in the use of the knowledge and expertise of the team members. Both formal and informal communication is important for an effective communicator leader. According to Barnum and Kerfoot (1995, p300), personal face-to-face communication is optimal, so I must make every effort to stagger my hours to allow this communication on a regular basis.
Leaders who make time for informal communication will have a more accurate understanding of the issues, will develop more open, trusting relationships within the organisation as well as a greater understanding of factors affecting morale and avoiding issues of miscommunication.
Another key leadership quality that will facilitate me to meet my challenges is being a good delegator. I should be able to delegate every job and task in delivering services within the team (Blanchard et al., 2007, p175). This helps to organize time and complete the task within different clients or variations of equipment used. As a ‘coach’ for the junior staff in my organisation, I also should have a mentorship quality.
Bennis suggests that “drawing out the leadership qualities (of others) is the way of the true leader” (Bennis, 2004). I must mentor juniors and acknowledge their ideas. My protégé definitely will have the same brain and idea as me, as a result, it will establish effective teamwork and avoid team conflict.
As realizing that there are lots of lacking in my leadership values of practice, assessment exercises definitely help in fixing the missing qualities. Leadership assessment exercises represent a wide range of strategic, organisational, and interpersonal challenges which have been measured using coworker ratings (Sloan, 1994, p1061). There are three basic purposes for leadership assessment, which is prediction, performance review, and development. The assessment that was used was multisource (also called 360-degree) feedback surveys which collect anonymous performance ratings from supervisors, subordinates, peers, and sometimes customers for comparison to self-ratings (Smither, 2003, p24).
The development of the key qualities that have been mentioned above is likely will enhance personal effectiveness, teamwork, and client care. I unanimously agreed that my experienced in leading interdisciplinary teams left me with the belief that good teams create safer and better patient care, improve resource utilization, improve team collaboration, and contribute to more personal effectiveness satisfaction. I always emphasized that a condition for success was the identification of clear goals and the need for leaders to facilitate the “buy-in” of goals by all team members.
As a team builder, asking each team member to commit to the success of the team was noted as a successful strategy within one team. The importance of leaders having public support of the team from highly regarded influential hospital leaders was also crucial in adopting national quality improvement for patient care issues. Leaders with effective communication always believed the need for good communication was imperative. I noted that willingness to communicate created opportunities to solve problems effectively within the team. I also noted that when team members became more familiar with each other’s roles, communication improved as did respect and collaboration.
There is a need to communicate across generations. The new team approach seemed to threaten autonomy and the “old way of doing things” for some practitioners. My team agreed to enlist key peers of the older generation, who were accepting of changes to communicate the rationale for changes. This development will directly improve the service delivery to the client, as there is no more miscommunication between therapist and client such as in client appointment issues.
A good delegator leader will recognize the wisdom of members of the health-care team, support the interconnectedness of team members in the health-care delivery system, and embrace a more fluid, innovative system. The leader will foster an environment that supports the notion of associates, which is being partners in the delivery of health care, being accountable for evaluating the outcomes of the interventions, having the equity in the team to make “point of service delivery” decisions, and feeling a sense of ownership in the organisation (Wilson and Porter-O’Grady, 1999, p32-8).
Improved relationships and respect for others led to sharing of professional literature and ideas. Assessment tools and protocols were developed reflecting interdisciplinary interests. Team members reported more collaborative care and more satisfaction with their work environment.
Mentorship is the process to accomplish all of these (Byrne and Keefe, 2002, p391). Mutual respect, goal setting, accountability to each other, and open dialogue are hallmarks of an effective mentoring relationship with a leader. The leader with a mentorship quality has the responsibility to create opportunities for professional growth and involvement, whereas the protégé is responsible for responding to these opportunities. The mentor has the responsibility to provide opportunities for the protégé to gain recognition for the work accomplished; the protégé is accountable for being responsible and reliable with the work accepted. The mentor empowers, encourages, and challenges the protégé.
Conclusion
In conclusion, health and social care organisations need leadership at all altitudes, from top to bottom. Leaders play very important roles in managing health care organisations, as the cliché goes, “where the rubber hits the road.” Leaders translate strategy into action. Leaders are responsible to make sure work gets done, services are delivered, and clients are satisfied. Leaders can almost make or break a company by how they lead the workforce and by how effectively their practical decisions respond to any challenges in the organisation.
Leadership greatly affects the attitudes and the productivity of workers. As the ones who lead platoons into battle, leaders must make critical adjustments to local conditions and terrain, keep people together, and be effective communicators and a mentor for the junior. With the intention of developing leadership proficiencies, it is essential for me to study professional leaders, work together with all, and get constructive feedback on my performance.
Having an outline and experience with senior leaders permits me as a ‘junior among senior leaders’ to comprehend the framework of my organisation, communicate and collaborate effectively, extend negotiation ability, reflect more extensively, and be empowered (Grossman, 2005, p266-78) in order to develop my personal effectiveness, team working and service delivery.
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