Introduction
Leadership is an attribute that is coveted by most professionals across different sectors for various reasons. However, the task that is involved in leadership carries a lot of weight than what most people might think. A leader is tasked with strategy development for a course that will achieve intended success, or achieve set goals and objectives. The responsibility even becomes more challenging in healthcare where there exists numerous dynamics that influence the daily operations in the healthcare industry. Therefore, a healthcare leader has to establish effective strategies to meet the demanding dynamics and at the same time ensure that healthcare operations run efficiently. This paper explores some of the effective strategies that have been proved through research to yield desired results by healthcare leaders. Also, the paper elaborates on the challenges associated with development of effective leadership strategies while providing possible solutions to these challenges.
Challenges and Problems in Formulation of Effective Leadership Strategies
Leadership on its own is a huge task for any individual put in that position given the demanding nature of the role. In healthcare, the creation of an effective leadership strategy is a difficult process for most healthcare leaders since many factors are involved within the healthcare space. These factors include demographics, cultural influences, and the organizational structure. Therefore, healthcare leaders face the challenge of balancing all these aspects on one scale when generating strategies for their leadership. Also, healthcare leaders do not have a rich leadership theoretical background, which is specific for healthcare that could be easily applied to their strategies to make the effective in their specific areas of operation. Most leadership theories were developed for business environments, which are in most cases extracted for application in the healthcare context. This strategy does not accurately meet the needs of healthcare leaders given the differences in variables involved between the healthcare setting and business setting. Last, healthcare leaders are facing a tough time in generating and maintaining professional leadership strategies in a complex and changing environment in the healthcare industry (Figueroa et al., 2019).
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Review of the Literature
Collaboration is an assertive strategy employed by healthcare leaders to promote unity and teamwork within the healthcare environment. A literature review study by Stockham (2016) referred this strategy as globalization in his research on distributed leadership in healthcare. According to his findings, globalization empowers the employees to support each other where they complement each other's strengths and offset each of their weaknesses, hence building a stronger team. Markle-Reid et al., (2017) assert that collaboration as a strategy ensures that all parties involved in the dispensation of healthcare services under a particular leadership perform to their maximum levels given that there is mutual benefit in the organizational symbiosis established. According to Chatterjee et al. (2018), a leader applying collaborative leadership strategy gives the health workers among other staff in a healthcare facility an opportunity to make their own informed decisions based on shared information across the organization. Additionally, the overall healthcare management is improved tremendously because the stakeholders within the facility are encouraged to dialogue from equal positions of influence, which in turn expands the diversity of ideas involved within a particular subject, hence reducing the complexity involved in the organization. Also, the strategy puts individuals with various levels of experience and responsibility into engagement with the leadership process established, where various needs are validated and discussed to formulate modern practices, which are crucial in addressing the dynamics of healthcare. A study by Okpala (2017) adds that collaboration strategy in healthcare promotes interdependence and motivation among healthcare practitioners because the individual partners and stakeholders are unified by common values, shared visions and goals, and a synergistic working practice which ultimately achieves greater results.
Compromise strategy is another effective leadership strategy used by healthcare leaders to ensure that healthcare units maintain collaboration for the purpose of goal achievement. Gopee and Galloway (2017) state that compromise primarily aims at conflict resolution within an organization. The healthcare setup encompasses several units with different levels of skills and profession, which in many cases might lead to unending conflicts if a proper communication process is not established. Yardan and Aydin (2018) in their research listed individualistic behavior and inter-group conflicts as the most common types of conflicts in a healthcare setting. Through compromise, a leader builds a platform whereby mistakes can be owned by individuals who commit them, while those around them respect their position and offer suppprt from the mistake. Also, through compromise, conflict situations are easily abated before they reach harmful levels.
Shared leadership is a strategy whereby the healthcare workers have direct input and contribution on top management decisions applied by the healthcare organization. According to past research studies, healthcare workers are autonomous and are directly involved in the welfare of a patient. Therefore, the use of authoritative leadership strategy tends to ruin this direct relationship with the patients, which might cause disastrous effects (Neubert et al., 2017). Shared leadership strategy ensures that the tasks within healthcare units are delegated equally allowing the workers to have shares governance and responsibility over each task. Therefore, other than promoting collaboration among workers, the strategy impacts the level of productivity within the work place, thus, continuous projects' successes. Also, Forsyth and Mason (2017) state that shared leadership gives the staff the opportunity to develop within the team and also maximizes on their job satisfaction levels. Furthermore, the workers adopt leadership behaviors, better autonomy, which all lead to better and improved patient care outcomes. However, Han (2016) warns that a healthcare leader adopting shared leadership as a strategy must ensure that the process is fluid and subject to continuous evaluation based on the changing healthcare challenges.
Critical Analysis of the Challenges in Formulation of Effective Leadership Strategies
The healthcare space encompasses various factors which are influenced by numerous variables pertaining to demographics, cultural influences, and organizational structure. Given this complexity, creation of an effective leadership strategy is a huge challenge for most healthcare leaders. A single strategy might not cater for all the desired key areas within a facility. For instance, the issue of cultural influences is among the most challenging since healthcare workers hail from different family backgrounds with different types of social practices and culture. These backgrounds tend to define these individuals including their behavior patterns at work. Therefore, it is difficult to coagulate all the cultures into one strategy for leadership when targeting the staff. Similarly, the demographics of these workers is also highly diversified and mighty not be entirely covered using one strategy (Figueroa et al., 2019).
Secondly, leadership strategies are mostly formulated from personal beliefs in conjunction with leadership theories. However, the healthcare sector does not have specific leadership theories from which healthcare leaders can directly apply their contexts in healthcare organizations. Leadership theories are founded on the business perspective, which forces healthcare leaders to indirectly apply to their situations in healthcare which might not accurately fit on most occasions. For instance, transactional leadership theory is a paradigm which focuses on transformative approaches to boost employee morale and satisfaction to produce results. In healthcare, lives are at stake and productivity and outcomes are not entirely measured by the successes unlike in the business context. Therefore, a healthcare leader applying transactional leadership will need to include other variables such as patients, and nonmedical workers before they can customize the strategy to fit their context.
Last, the healthcare industry is prone to various changes driven by technology and other natural factors. Therefore, a strategy composed today might not exactly reflect the same outcome in a short period into the future due to changing variables. Therefore, healthcare leaders have to ensure that formulated strategies take into account the future, which is a difficult task.
Recommended Solutions
Use of Leadership Development programs would equip the healthcare leaders with better skills to tackle the critical challenges they face in formulation of effective leadership strategies. Leadership Development programs in healthcare are more specific to healthcare issues and dynamics, which give the leaders a more profound background in handling their problems. Apart from that, leadership development programs should build skills such as communication which is a crucial attribute in healthcare systems, and thus key in strategy development. Education on cultural diversity and effective ways to deal with the issue is also among the areas covered by LD programs. Therefore, through attending these programs healthcare leaders would be able to manage the diversity in cultural influences among different stakeholders effectively, and build their specific strategies around them (Mustapha et al., 2019).
The ever changing healthcare industry can only be tackled through progressive continuous research and development. Healthcare leaders need to establish professional teams to conduct continuous research on various issues surrounding healthcare so that they can promptly identify trends within the industry and adjust their strategies accordingly. Continuous research will help these leaders to stay updated and also understand ways to form strategies that are timely and easy to adjust based on incoming changes in the industry.
Implementation of Solutions
These solutions would be best implemented through establishment of well-equipped research and development centers by healthcare leaders, and development of LD training programs for both leaders and employees. Establishment of research and development centers should be done fully by purchasing necessary research tools and recruiting qualified research professionals to undertake the task at hand. Similarly, the LD programs should be developed in conjunction with the specific needs of a healthcare leader and their area of operation.
Conclusion
The healthcare industry encompasses various dynamics which make it a challenge for healthcare leaders to develop effective leadership strategies for their respective organizations. Other factors include the complexity of the healthcare sector and lack of a clear healthcare-specific theoretical background on leadership from which they can directly apply to their healthcare organizations. However, healthcare leaders have still managed to establish strategies that have helped them manage healthcare organizations effectively. These strategies include collaboration, shared leadership, and compromise. These strategies were based on the most common challenges faced by healthcare organizations and how leaders have managed to tackle them in the recent past. Even though most of these strategies have worked effectively, healthcare leaders still need to pay key attention to the challenges addressed by adopting leadership development programs which are focused on leadership skills refinement, and research which with help them stay updated.
References
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Forsyth, C., & Mason, B. (2017). Shared leadership and group identification in healthcare: The leadership beliefs of clinicians working in interprofessional teams. Journal of Interprofessional Care, 31(3), 291-299.
Gopee, N., & Galloway, J. (2017). Leadership and management in healthcare. Sage.
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Neubert, T., Williamson, J., & Brace, H. (2017). Shared leadership for nursing. Management in Healthcare, 2(2), 107-114.
Okpala, P. (2017). Increasing access to quality healthcare through collaborative leadership. International Journal of Healthcare Management, 1-7.
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