Personal Leadership Style
Ahmed Aly, MPT, MHA
Role of Leadership in Managing Quality initiatives in Healthcare
Servant Leadership
The article explained the servant leadership and it’s relation to employee and patient satisfaction ! It explained also the relationship between the servant leadership, employees satisfaction and Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems ( HCAHPS ) scores as two hundreds nineteen surveys were collected from 10 different community hospitals. ( McCann, Graves & Cox, 2014 ) Servant leaders have to work through the everyday challenges of the organization’s limitations and demands and with the client’s needs and satisfactions, as mentioned in Greenleaf ( 1977 ) the developer of the modern context of servant leadership, that true leadership is essentially synonymous with service and great leaders are identified by the service they perform for individuals and society. ( McCann, Graves & Cox, 2014 ) There are difference between leaders and managers, both of them are essential as they have different roles, as leaders are focusing on vision, judgment and effectiveness oriented while the managers have to focus on efficiency, mastering routine and to do things right ! ( McCann, Graves & Cox, 2014 ) Barbuto and Wheeler ( 2006 ) developed five factors which give an indication of servant leadership; Altruistic healing, which measure of how the servant leaders can make a positive changes in the people surrounding him, as the main characteristics of a servant leader is to serve other people and prioritize their needs over his own needs ! Emotional healing, as the servant leaders are able make a spiritual recovery from a trauma, they are good listener and willing to
make the people safe to share with them personal and professional information and concerns, persuasive recovery, as the leaders are able to use reasoning process and conceptual frameworks in influencing others, Wisdom of the leaders to be aware of the workplace’s surrounding and the anticipated consequences and finally the organizational Stewardship, where the leaders are not only serving the organizations or individuals but also to serve the community and get involved in the programs and community outreach. ( McCann, Graves & Cox, 2014 ) Job satisfaction is the feeling of the employees with satisfaction and emotional reaction towards their work environment based on the actual results against their expectation, and for the servant leaders as their main focus is to genuinely care and help others will lead to job satisfaction and improving the quality of the organization and that’s why the article described the servant leadership as the best leadership style to be used within the organizations, addressing and identifying the requirements of followers ahead of individual consideration, viewed the servant leader as the trustees of the human capital of an organization, also the research concluded that servant leader, job/employee satisfaction and HCAHPS to be strongly positively correlated ( McCann, Graves & Cox, 2014 ).
Transformational Leadership
A process of mutual exchange between leaders and followers involving reward-based transaction ( Rudnick, 2007 ) this kind of transformational leadership based on the motivation of the leaders to each other’s and employees in order to reach the highest performance, in the aim of increasing the employees loyalty to the organization and get them to understand and attach to the organizational vision and mission ( Rudnick, 2007 ) the transformational leaders characteristics are future oriented, committed to planning, open minded, dynamic, event makers, self actualization, charismatic, inspire and motivate their followers, provide intellectual stimulation and pay attention to their followers needs ! ( Rudnick, 2007 ) the transformational leaders have to provide their followers with tools that could include training, leader visibility and availability, ethics committee support for difficult clinical situation, continuous quality improvement and human resources support system ( Rudnick, 2007 )
Transactional Leadership
The most dominant leadership style that is used within the healthcare organization and is a relationship of mutual dependence in which the contribution between each party are recognized, goals are met and rewards are delivered ( Schwartz, 2002 ) Transactional leadership focuses on results, conforms on the existing structure of an organization and measures success according to that organization’s system of rewards and penalties, and it is usually used within a big organizations and sometimes in specific situations or crisis ( Spahr, 2016 ) The most popular characteristics of transactional leaders are focused on short term goals, favor structures policy and procedures, thrives on following rules, revel in efficiency, inflexible, left brained and opposed to change( Spahr, 2016 ) It has many disadvantage such as poor satisfaction of the employees and that will lead to decrease the profit of the organizations ( Schwartz, 2002 ), doesn’t reward personal initiatives, creativity is limited and reward the employees on practical levels only, while the advantages are achieve short term goals quickly, rewards and penalties are clear for employees, unambiguous structure for large organizations and rewards those who are motivated by self interest to follow instructions ( Spahr, 2016 )
The leadership style that I read about before is the transactional leadership style and that can be applied in Bill Gates who had 2.5 million when he was 23 years old, and him as a transactional leader, he used to visit the new product team and ask them hard questions to be sure that they understand the operation ( Spahr, 2016 ) but for me, I would choose the transformational leadership style, as I am a charismatic leader, and I would love to have my followers relation based on inspiration, motivation, shared information, intellectual stimulation, trust, honesty integrity, innovation and sense of social responsibility.
Reference
J McCann, D Graves & L Cox ( 2014 ) Servant Leadership, Employee Satisfaction, Organizational Performance in Rural Community Hospital, retrieved from http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/ijbm/article/viewFile/38822/22399
J Rudnick ( 2007 ) Transformational Leadership, retrieved from https://www.chausa.org/publications/health-progress/article/may-june-2007/transformational-leadership
Pamela Spahr ( 2016 ) What is Transactional Leadership ? How Structured Lead to Result, retrieved from http://online.stu.edu/transactional-leadership/
R Schwartz ( 2002 ) The Power of Servant Leadership to Transform Healthcare Organizations for the 21st Century Economy, retrieved from http://archsurg.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=213222
