by Noor Ul Ain Janjua Zaidi, RHIT
“Management is about persuading people to do things they do not want to do, while leadership is about inspiring people to do things they never thought they could.” (Steve Jobs)
Leadership is one of the most important qualities in any industry. The quality that makes you stand out from your competitors and allows you to rise above the rest. Healthcare is no exception. With the increased need for more healthcare workers, more attention should be placed on leadership qualities in these fields. This article will discuss some of those qualities and how they can help improve leadership skills within healthcare organizations and other industries where high levels of leadership are needed.
Let’s see the four main types of leadership famous these days transactional, charismatic, transformational, and servant. These types are beneficial in poorly structured kinds of organizations.
Transactional: The leadership style of these leaders is characterized by an exchange process between leaders and followers.
Strength: Strong planning and budgeting skills and technical competence
Weakness: Lacking cognitive and affective competencies skills
Charismatic: These leaders inspire their followers to place departmental or organizational interests above their own and to pursue goals higher than expected.
Strength: Clear vision for the future and more robust affective competencies
Weakness: Lacking cognitive and technical competency.
Transformational: These leaders have a strong vision and believe that shared values and ideas are necessary to build relationships. It is characterized by more robust cognitive competence than affective and technical competence.
This type of leadership style is crucial for failing or troubled organizations.
Transformational leadership is similar to the charismatic type. However, transformational leaders “link the fulfillment of the vision and the actual fabric and texture of organizational culture.”
-The Journal of Human Resource and Adult Learning
Servant: This leadership style is characterized by the leader putting the needs of others before their self-interest, encouraging creativity, promoting learning, sharing power, and enhancing others’ self-worth.
Strength: Servant leaders lay in cognitive and effective competence.
Weakness: Lacking technical competence.
Leadership can make or break the health care organization.
Impact of healthcare change on leadership
The healthcare environment is becoming increasingly complex, so healthcare leaders need help to keep up with new technologies.
Mobile technology is improving patient-physician connectivity, and patients expect timely responses from various platforms such as patient networks, telemedicine, and social media.
According to a report published by the Health Research & Educational Trust (HRET) titled “Building a Leadership Team for the Health Care Organization of the Future,” 60 percent of healthcare leadership teams are larger than they were three years ago.
There are a few questions that every healthcare leader should ask themselves.
As a leader, how can I ensure that my employees can handle complex situations?
As a leader, am I providing transparent means of communication to develop technical skills in my team?
As a leader, what should I know today that I did not know yesterday?
As a leader, do I respect the ideas and visions my team members give?
There can be many more questions per the organization's culture and needs.
Leadership is essential in the healthcare industry because it helps people to be more productive and efficient, which results in better patient care. Leaders have communication, emotional intelligence, and motivation skills to lead their teams effectively. Leadership is also essential because it helps people to be more productive and efficient in the workplace.
In the healthcare industry, leaders play a vital role in helping the organization grow and thrive. They help define the culture and set expectations for employees. This can be done by mentoring junior staff members, leading by example (or failing fast), providing feedback on performance reviews, or even being friendly to your colleagues!
Sources:
Recommended Readings
https://publichealth.tulane.edu/blog/healthcare-advocacy/
https://www.peoplefluent.com/blog/insights/5-most-important-skills-healthcare-leaders/
About the Author
She is working as an HIM Identity and Deficiency Technician at Nationwide Children's Hospital. She worked as an Emergency Service Representative at Cincinnati Children's Hospital. Noor graduated with her HIM Associate Degree from Sinclair Community College and earned her RHIT. She also has a Master of Public Administration with Human Resource Management as her major from the University of Karachi, Pakistan.
