Essay Example on Leadership in Health Organizations

1. Leadership and its Vitality to Successful Health Organization

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Leadership is a process of directing peoples behavior toward achieving and accomplishing specific set objectives. The people have to voluntarily offer themselves, without any form of coercion, to see the success and the accomplishment of the objectives and goals. Leadership usually occurs in groups with a common central attention of fulfilling predetermined goals (Contino, 2004). A leader, therefore, has huge responsibility and impact in influencing the team he or she leads. Their actions will determine whether the team will accomplish their collective target or not. Good leadership within an organization promotes unity among its workers, enabling them to serve with willingness, confidence, enthusiasm and zeal towards achieving set goals and objectives. Management and leadership are often confused within an organization. In terms of similarities both influence the action of the people working under them and ensuring accomplishments of goals. However, the difference between them is that leadership targets at producing change and growth while management targets at providing consistency and order (Vera, & Crossan, 2004).

Every organization including health organizations needs good leadership because of the benefits that come with it. Health organizations deal with the treatment of diseases in people. Their work is not easy and therefore without good leadership some workers may lack the moral of continuing to serve patients. With good leadership, the health care providers within their institutions will be able to work together as a team in ensuring that the needs of patients are taken care of (Ledlow & Coppola, 2013). For instance, if the patient needed urgent clinical handover and the doctors worked as a team, then they will be able to deduce the treatment plan to be applied. This will be possible if there is good internal communication between without any discriminations due to rankings. To have good communication within an organization, the organization must have a good leader, who will be able to promote unity and encourage teamwork among the healthcare providers (Zaccaro, Rittman & Marks, 2002). Good leadership also encourages innovations and active participations in decision making especially on matters affecting the organization. That may be helpful in actualizing the visions and goals of that organization.

2. A Distinction of the Typologies used in Personality Assessments and Personality Archetype Assessments.

Understanding ones personality is an important aspect that may help one to maneuver difficulties that exist in determining human qualities central to good leadership (Vazire, 2006). Such knowledge is key to self-development, and especially behavioral and social skill development. Effective typologies may improve a persons knowledge and understanding of other people. This may be beneficial to healthcare providers in helping them predict crucial information about a patient, which helps as far as the deduction of appropriate treatment plans is concerned. Understanding personality types make one realize that, while we may be different, we all have our unique values and capabilities. There are different personality models which are utilized in organizations for personality assessments. They include;

The Big Five Factors Personality Model

The model highlights the factors that determine personality. The factors include as per Paul Sinclair include, extraversion, confidence, detail-consciousness, tough- mindedness and conformity (Vazire, 2006). The factors may be alternatively represented by different other measures such as openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism (Vazire, 2006). The factors are usually sub-broken when effectively applied in determining personalities, and each factor assigns high or low scores, and that helps in personality assessments. For instance, for the case of extraversion, those with a low score (introversion) are shy, reserved and poor communicators while those with high scores (extraversion) are open, talkative and are socially active.

For the case of confidence, those with low scores (sensitive) are not sure about themselves, they dont like making big decisions, and they have low emotional control, and are without ambitions. Those with a high score (confidence) have high self-esteem, are decisive, enjoy playing leadership roles and are ambitious (Vazire, 2006).

For the case of detail-consciousness, those with a low score (unstructured) are usually less committed and dislike paperwork while those with a high score (detail conscious) are usually keen, committed, dutiful, reliable and plan their work.

For tough-mindedness, persons who register a low score (agreeableness) are tolerant, kind, patient, democratic and prefer teamwork but those with a high score (tough-mindedness) are self-reliant, dislike teamwork, and are generally autocratic in nature.

For the conformity, low scorers (creative) like challenges which require thinking out of the box to come up with new ideas, while high scorers (conforming) usually follow rules, are cautious to change and strictly apply guidelines to accomplish a task.

These factors when combined define personality.

FIRO-B

The acronym stands for fundamental interpersonal relation- behavior. The model was developed by William Schutz (1958). It is important in assessing inclusion, control, and affection. Making it different from the big five model. The assessment enables one to better get and understand individual and group behavior, making it different also from the other model which only focuses on individual assessment. Through that assessment, people are able to choose teams which they think they will be comfortable and able to work with. In this model, there are no such profiles as a high or low score (Vazire, 2006).

Lumina spark

It was created in 2009 by Stewart Desson, with the aim of expanding the big five model. The system uses a multi-level structure which has four colored archetypes, eight detailed aspects, and twenty-four qualities. The four archetypes include commanding, empowering, conscientious and inspiring. The Lumina spark has created three personas which include underlying, every day and overextended. Underlying persona indicates the personality when one is relaxed and in their natural state. Everyday persona indicates how one behaves or acts when in public and the overextended persons is seen when one is under some levels of stress. The model is different from another model as it identifies personalities depending on whether the person is in public, private or is under stress (Quick, MacikFrey & Cooper, 2007).

Morphopyschology

The method is applied to analyzing personalities by making use of facial features, more specifically facial expressions. It is important also in analyzing mood and mental health of a person. The use of facial expressions to determine personality makes it different from other types of personality assessments. It analyses facial features according to skin texture, firmness of the facial features and width and depth of the face. After the analysis, the four Morphopyschological types are created; dilated, lateral retraced, front retracted and retracted. These types are used to determine ones personality. For example, babies with a dilated personality type if they express plain cheeks, big eyes and mouth, small thick nose and a wide, round face they are likely to be sensual, noisy and extroverted (Vazire, 2006).

3. Essence of Leadership Theories to Health Organizations

Leadership theory keeps on changing as time goes by. In an organization, it important for the workers to understand the various theories of leadership, so as to prevent and avoid misunderstandings which may result in conflicts. Most of these theories were designed for business fields and therefore if healthcare providers lack a good understanding of the theories, they will not be able to apply them effectively in the health organizations (Quick, MacikFrey & Cooper, 2007).

Good understanding of theories by the leaders of health organizations, helps them develop good leadership skills as per the current situation. That, therefore, will motivate the people working under them to dedicate more effort towards performing their jobs (Ledlow & Coppola, 2013). Through the study of theory, the leadership of organizations can be manipulated and changed depending on workers needs. The leadership will have been understood and studied using different theories, and that may help in the improvements of good leadership in the organizations.

Also, the study of theory is important in the identification of which leadership theory best can be applied within health organizations. The leaders will be able to understand that good leadership applies equality and fair treatment (Ledlow & Coppola, 2013).

4. The distinction of the Situational Leadership Theory from Transactional Leadership and from Transformational Leadership.

Situational leadership theory is specifically based on the premise that human behavior changes and vary depending on the situation. The leaders, therefore, are required to analyze situations all the time and make decisions on what is to be done as per the prevailing situation. In this type of leadership, the leaders have limited power and the leaders will express different leadership responsibilities (Schultz & Schultz, 2016). The leaders, therefore, have to adjust to new leadership styles that will suit the development level of their followers.

Transactional leadership applies the use of punishment and rewards to make sure that all the followers comply with laws and policy frameworks within an organization. The difference with the situational theory is that in this type of leadership is that its rigid, and regulatory compliance is compulsory (Gregory Stone, Russell & Patterson, 2004). This type of leadership is also known as managerial leadership.

Transformational leadership usually focuses on bringing change. The leaders communicate their vision and encourage workers to work together in unity towards ensuring that they collectively achieve the target and vision of the organization. It is different from transactional leadership in that it doesnt apply force through punishments so that workers deliver but rather employs the use of encouragement and motivation of workers to willingly exert their efforts and accomplish the objectives (Ledlow & Coppola, 2013).

The differences in these leadership styles are that with situational leadership the leader adjusts his style depending on situational changes, so as to ensure good performance from the workforce (Gregory Stone, Russell & Patterson, 2004). However, with transactional leadership, the workers have no freedom to work without the threat of punishments. Under transformational leadership, the leader motivates the followers through good attitude, therefore encouraging good performances without coercion.

5. The complexity of the Health Workforce as a Contributing Factor to Communication Breakdown and Conflict.

Good communication among health workers within the health organizations safeguards the interests both of patients and of the healthcare providers. In a hospital, there usually are several departments and in most instances patients pass through these departments, interacting with many employees before they are treated (Bannister, Wickenheiser & Keegan, 2014). For instance, patients suspected to have mental disorder has to undergo several tests involving different specialists before they receive their medication. In such cases, there is a clinical handover, and the professional healthcare providers must exchange reports about patients in question. That may be problematic if...