Leadership is a process through which a person or persons influence others in a group in order to achieve a common goal through cohesiveness. Leadership requires acquisition of skills, knowledge and exposure. However, certain attributes like beliefs, values, ethics and character are unique to an individual leader. Therefore, a leader should be able to influence others positively and steer an organization towards the attainment of its goals and objectives (Paul, 2008).
There are four factors of leadership including becoming a leader, communication, follower and situation. A leader should know the roles to play and the expectations. He has to assert to his followers that he is worth being followed (Paul, 2008). Second, communication is a very vital tool since it assigns roles and duties.
Communication is always two way and most of the times it is non-verbal. It helps in building a good working relationship in an organization. Third, leadership includes followers. Different people prefer different styles of leadership, thus a leader shoud understand and monitor his followers in order to know what they need to perform their duties correctly (Paul, 2008).
It is very important to know people according to their needs, feelings and character. Finally, leadership involves a situation. Situations in an organization are very different and each situation calls for a different course of action. Leadership should be very judgmental in analyzing each situation that arises (Paul, 2008).
Gaining trust and confidence and effective communication are key aspects to effective leadership. Therefore, leadership should aim at providing direction, strategizing plans, implementing policies and motivating their employees towards realization of the organization’s goals and objectives (Paul, 2008).
Since the primary function of healthcare is to offer quality medical services to people, leadership in healthcare organizations, mostly hospitals should aim at achieving the above common goal. For effective leadership, health organizations act as a system and not as a conglomerate unit.
A system is a combination of processes, people and other resources. In most organizations, there are two groups of leadership, the governing body and the chief executive officer together with the senior management team (Paul, 2008). However, it is different in the case of healthcare organizations since there is a third leadership group. This group comprises of the leader of medical staff, physicians, dentists, gynecologists, psychologists and other licensed medical practitioners (Paul, 2008).
The licensed medical practitioners mostly physicians diagnose patients thus they make final decisions. These decisions affect directly on the healthcare use of resources from nursing to diagnostic and laboratory tests. They therefore affect the organization’s ability to provide high-quality safe care (Paul, 2008).
For that reason, the organization’s leadership should adequately incorporate this third group of leadership in order to ensure the smooth running of the organization. These three leadership groups should work together for the organization to achieve its goals (Paul, 2008).
The quality of medical services and care provided by a healthcare depends on the following factors. They include a culture of excellence, availability of resources (human, financial and physical), evaluation and improvement of performance. Only leadership has the capacity to provide these factors. Together they can strategize on how to improve the organizations performance. They should work as team towards a common goal, each understanding their roles and helping others in the same (Paul, 2008).
Conclusively, the three leadership groups in healthcare organizations share responsibilities of leadership. However, the governing body has the oversight role to integrate a team into a system with the aim of providing quality and safe healthcare.
Reference
Paul, M. (2008). Leadership in Healthcare Organizations. New York: Springer Publishers.