Analysis and critique
Leaders in the healthcare industry have the responsibility of clinical as well as quality-of-life indicators as well as the well-being of the health system. They need to work with other healthcare professionals from different healthcare domains. They need to develop strategies and lead their subordinates effectively to fulfill the strategies and meet the aims and objectives set for healthcare development (Priest & Gass, 2017). Effective collaboration with all stakeholders with effective mixture of innovation, emotional intelligence and clinical and non-pharmacological expertise can help leaders to successfully overcome different barriers and develop a better community for all members. This assignment would be mainly based on analysis the case study of a prospective healthcare leader called Helen. It will also show the different healthcare-leadership approaches she needs to undertake to ensure effective outcome on the community health and development.
Effective health leadership framework advises prospective leaders to develop their respective traits and values that help them in portraying as role model. They need to conduct actions that are ethical and align with the requirements of the development of effective healthcare leadership. Researchers are of the opinion that such leaders need to be self-aware and thereby manage their values, beliefs and attitudes in ways by which they can act collaboratively within teams and guide all stakeholders towards success (Delmatoff & Lazarus, 2014). They also need to take responsibilities and find out ways for their personal development. They also need to have their own strength of character. Helen is seen to be introvert and has never worked in collaboration with other. Therefore, it might be possible that although he is an expert practitioner but might not show effective team leadership skills. She is introvert and therefore her communication skills might not be also developed. Therefore, Helen needs to actively reflect on their performance as a leader and assume the responsibility for engaging in learning as well as growth. She would need to develop her communication skills, as she would need to communicate with policy makers, funding authorities, architects and many others. Effective communication skills are very important in development of teams. Moreover, she is also introvert, who might have affected her relationship with other members and they might accept her in negative manner. Therefore, she would need to develop the skills (Spurgeon et al., 2017).
The next set of trait that the leadership framework is effective engagement and collaboration with different stakeholders to make programs successful. The leaders need to value diversity and models as well as harbor cultural responsiveness. They need to ensure that all consumers and workers are treated with dignity as well as respect in all settings (Trastek et al., 2014). They also need to communicate with honesty and respect. They also need to strengthen consumers, collages and even leaders. Helen is a new age healthcare professionals and are well aware of the present day innovative systems that need to be inculcated in the communities to ensure effective health development. However, the policy makers, architects and town planners as well as the senior government stakeholders are not comfortable working with young people like Helen. They are also skeptical about her abilities to become a healthcare officer. Therefore, she would first need to develop effective relationship with all the stakeholders and gain their trust and confidence. She needs to display her expertise and skills and impress the stakeholders at first to gain their confidence. Following this, she needs to respect the values and beliefs of each of the stakeholders and include them in effective decision-making. This would help in development of bonds between the members and earn mutual respect among each other. Therefore, Helen will be able to strike effective relationship with the members and work as teams effectively. Moreover, she had been given a ten-member team to initiate her actions. She needs to provide respect to the suggestions of each of the embers ad include them in two-way communication (Frankel et al., 2018). This would make the members feel that their leaders care their opinions and this help in creating bonds among members as well.
Effective Communication and Collaboration
Another important skill that the framework dictates is the effective driving of the innovation by the healthcare leaders. Researchers are of the opinion that successful innovation in healthcare can only follow from passionate leadership without which the status quo cannot be challenged. The leaders need to champion the need for innovation as well as improvement. They need to build the support for the change. They also need to positively contribute to the spreading the innovative change (Cheng et al., 2016). Helen had successfully identified that people mainly the senior citizens in the community are facing huge issues when they need specialist care. They are not being able to access the specialist care, which require them to travel 300 kms to get services they require. Hence, she had rightly identified the needs of innovative approaches like that of tele-consultations and tele-surgery. This would help them to provide specialists care in their own home or in the community clinics being connected with specialized services in the urban areas. Therefore, in such arenas leaders need to influence informed discussion on the health issues with every senior authority and need to challenge the traditional procedures. Helen would need to encourage diverse voices as well as consumer involvement and advocate for their better outcomes. She should also initiate and maintain a proper momentum for assessing, sharing as well as celebrating different changes for people-centered services and system improvement. She would need to discuss about the various benefits of the new innovative systems to the traditional decision makers and need to discuss the funding systems successfully (Pepescu et al., 2016). Accordingly, she would need to have the correct communication skills that would help her to influence the embers. This would bring out positive health outcomes on the people of the community.
Another important skill would be to shape healthcare systems that would include services, legislations as well as funding. Researchers are of the opinion that leaders who can successfully recognize patterns for interdependency are able to explain trends and facilitate initiatives as well as strategies (Hopkins et al., 2016). These help in achieving maximum benefits and minimizing unintended harms or negative consequences. Leaders need to understand and apply proper system thinking. They need to engage and collaborate with consumers as well as communities. They also need to develop alliance. Helen would need to involve the consumers as well as communities in decision making for different health policies as well as education and training and even in healthcare delivery and improvement. In the case study, it has been identified that there is indeed a need for developing a close knit community where the community residents would be responsible for their own health by taking proper healthcare decisions and altering their lifestyle factors towards safer one. They also need to be empowered in taking control of their own environments and they need to participate actively in voicing out their concerns and in policy development (Hopkins et al., 2015). Therefore, Helen along with his team would dedicate in promoting the understanding of community dwellers. They would need to involve in respecting and trusting between different groups, professions, organizations, sectors ad points to ensure effective building of alliance. They need to enhance connectivity and minimize unintended consequences. By this, Helen would be able to create a safer environment for consumers, and arrange for health education and health promotions programs to empower them by developing health literacy, teach them proper lifestyles and correct ways of healthy living.
Innovation in Healthcare Leadership
From the above-mentioned procedures, Helen would not only be able to develop a safer environment for community members but also empower themselves to be responsible about their health. She would be correctly able to develop alliance with the traditional senior authorities and work collaboratively as teams. The innovative strategies would also help in better quality health of all members in the community.
Analysis of the leadership assessment test had helped me to identify the important leadership traits that are absent in me. One of the most important negative aspects that I lack is my poor self-regulation skills. Self-regulation can be determined as the attribute of individuals that allow them to control their own behaviors as well as emotions and thoughts (Fischer, 2016). It can be also defined as the ability of the individuals to manage their disruptive emotions as well as impulses effectively. I have realized that I do not have proper self-regulation skills. I often get tensed under pressure and feel emotionally drained out. During negotiations and conflicts among team members, I feel nervous and frustrated and cannot openly discuss my suggestions or concerns effectively. I often get annoyed that worsen the situation. in the healthcare organizations, nurses need to provide patient centered care and for that they need to fulfill the expectations of the patients and communicate with them effectively. Patients may come from various backgrounds and possess their one viewpoint regarding every decision that need to be taken. In such situation, self-regulation helps leaders to correctly handle situations without getting frustrated or emotionally drained out (Arons et al., 2015). Leaders also need to handle multi-disciplinary teams comprising of different healthcare experts and specialists with their own set of skills/ they might have different opinions which might not align with the healthcare leaders. In such areas, self-regulation help in effective negotiation and prevent conflicts. In addition, this attribute help in handling work burden effectively without feeling drained out (McFadden et al., 2015). Therefore, I need to develop self-regulation skills so that I can handle the above-mentioned situations effectively.
Another attribute that also needs to be highlighted is my introvert nature and lack of effective feedback exchange skills. While undertaking the analysis, I realized that I am quite introvert and cannot provide suggestions in different team meetings or where team decisions are to be made. This makes others to perceive me in a negative manner and this affects the communication flow in the healthcare sector (Demeh et al., 2015). Moreover, to develop an effective organizational culture of safety and quality for the patients, all members of the healthcare teams need to communicate with each other and provide effective feedbacks to each other. When leaders engage in effective feedback sessions, they can help the subordinates to identify their inappropriate behaviors and skills and guide them to develop the skills to achieve excellence (Crowell, 2015). However, I am quite introvert and usually try to escape from situations where I need to give feedbacks to others. As a result, the employees perceive me to be detached or careless about them and they cannot understand the skills they need to develop. Therefore, to be an effective leader, I need to develop effective feedback exchange skills and overcome my introvert nature.
System Thinking in Healthcare Leadership
I also realized that I do not have effective team leadership skills. I cannot develop effective relationships with other healthcare members and hence lack of bonds affects the teamwork. I am introvert in nature and feel that my suggestions might affect the emotions of the others. I rarely go out of my comfort zone and help others to overcome obstacles and challenges due to my introvert nature. I also cannot encourage others to work beyond their potential as that makes me feel that the subordinates might feel disappointed or embarrassed. I cannot support my team members in developing their clinical as well as non-pharmacological skills. Lack of teamwork skills in me prevent in developing mutual trust and comfort in the members and prevent them from developing mutual respect and Transparency. Therefore, I need to develop these skills to become effective leaders.
The leadership style that would be helpful for handling the mentioned scenario in part 1 would be transformational leadership style. One of the most important traits that would be helpful for me to handle the situation is intellectual stimulation. The leaders need to encourage the other team members to be creative as well as innovative (Mah’d Alloubani et al., 2014). The leader needs to ensure that there is no hesitation among the team leaders in discarding the old practices set by them, which is not much effective. By following the trait, I would mainly be first discussing about the importance of teleconsultations and telesurgery. I would encourage them to look for the benefits and analyse how these attributes would help in development of the community health services in the nation.
Another trait that I need to develop is individualized consideration. It is important for leaders to consider each concerns faced by the staff members and accordingly help them to overcome the concerns (Crowell, 2015). Therefore, I would make the community members take active participation in decision-making and thereby try to learn about the problems faced by community members in getting access to healthcare. Accordingly, I would try my best to encourage them to take up lifestyle modifications that would help them overcome the issues they face.
Another important trait that I possess in my leadership skill is called the idealized influence. This mainly involves the leaders to influence change that can help in engendering trust as well as loyalty among the different members of the team through charisma as well as through positive behaviors (Ingebrigtsen et al., 2014). I would thereby ensure the presence of this trait in my leadership skill so that I can influence the senior authorities who usually prefer the traditional approach. I can set an example by which the modern healthcare approaches help in developing the community set-ups and thereby modify the environment that would help in prevention of various chronic ailments. I will display high ethical as well as moral values while dealing with the other members of the team. This will help in developing strong relationships with all the members that will ensure high-level teamwork.
I do not have strong communication skills. This can affect my communication with the other members of the team and can act as barriers in ensuring effective transformational leadership attributes. Two way communication and feedback are extremely important in maintaining effective teamwork and this should be ensured by my leadership attributes.
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