Essay on Attributes of a Successful Health Leader

Leadership has been defined as an act of leading others. The character traits of a successful health leader are similar to those of any other successful leader. Leadership involves the establishment of a clear vision for the organization or the team and sharing the vision with members of a team, group or the organization so that the members follow willingly. Additionally, it involves providing members or followers with knowledge, information, as well as methods which they can use to realize the vision. Leadership also involve coordinating as well as balancing conflicting interests of the followers, members, and stakeholders. In the healthcare scenario, a successful health leader must be capable of being involved in these activities. Other qualities of a successful health leader include focus, confidence transparency, open-mindedness, integrity, transparency, patience, passion, and innovation. A successful health leader is also one who has qualities such as empowerment, decisiveness, persistence, generosity, accountability, insightfulness, and positivity.

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Globalization, Power, Fellowship and Culture Change

Globalization has been defined as the tendency of businesses as well as investment funds to move beyond national and domestic markets to other markets in various parts of the world and thereby creating an interdependent and interconnected world with free transfer of services, goods, and capital. Previously, globalization has been viewed only regarding economic aspect, but globalization has also had a great implication on healthcare. With globalization, it has become easier for people to move across cultures and in the process, they interact with people from another culture. It is common nowadays to find a health leader who is not from a dominant culture or host culture. Globalization has therefore led to the globalization of leadership in healthcare. Globalization has also led to the movement of health workers across the globe, and in some situations, a health leader can be in charge of a facility that comprises staff from a multicultural background. Holland, Malvey, and Fottler (2009) pointed out that as healthcare organizations continue to expand and move beyond the national borders into the global markets, they encounter a host of leadership challenges. Such leadership challenges include leading staff who are geographically dispersed. Additionally, globalization also leads to confusion, technology breakdown, language barrier, isolation, and cultural differences to the staff and leaders.

Globalization has led to increasing in the multicultural diversity of healthcare staff. Some healthcare staff moves out from their home countries in search of employment opportunities or further studies. Other medical staff moves out of their home countries to provide specialized or voluntary services to patients in other countries. With the advancement in technology, the issue of managing dispersed geographical locations has been solved to a large extent. Nowadays, healthcare leaders can manage dispersed geographical locations virtually (Holland, Malvey, & Fottler, 2009; DasGupta, 2011). To manage effectively, it requires that the healthcare leader and the staffs speak the same language otherwise, there will be a language barrier. Language is just one of the dimensions of culture (Dreachslin, Gilbert, & Malone, 2013) and even when the issue of language is solved, there is the issue of culture which presents one of the greatest challenges facing the healthcare leaders. MacPhee, Chang, Lee, and Spiri (2013) pointed out that cultural differences among a team of medical staff can lead to team dysfunction. Successful management of staff from other cultural background requires a deep understanding of their culture because what is good in one culture may be viewed as inappropriate in another culture. The power-distance relationship among the staff and the leader are also largely influenced by the cultural background of the staff about the leader. While some cultures have high power distance relationships, others have low power distance relationships. For example, in some cultures, people prefer directive than a participatory form of leadership, and they expect that a leader should take full control of the team. In such a culture, a leader may lose legitimacy by coming up with leadership empowering strategies such as shifting leadership approach from I to we leadership. In such cultures or where members of a team are coming from such a cultural background, collective or participatory leadership requires a slow assimilation of shared power as well as leadership responsibilities. Individual leadership is ideal for cultures that embrace task-focused leaders and vertical formal authority. In such a situation, the introduction of shared power and leadership requires the introduction of rotated leadership which gives a chance to team members to alternate formal decision-making responsibilities, and in the process, all team members build their leadership competencies.

According to MacPhee, Chang, Lee, and Spiri (2013), successful team outcomes also largely depend on how carefully the team is structured. This includes work team mixes of cross-functional and cross-cultural teams that employ collaborative approaches to determine work strategy. The authors suggested that to avoid potential conflict; team members need to be represented by all cultures, organizational levels, and strategic functions. A diverse mix of medical staff enables the team to unmask any potential cultural conflicts and come up with better ways of working collaboratively regardless of the cultural differences. To bridge cultural differences, the authors asserted that the team members need to be competent in relationship-building skills. To them, relationship-building skills help the team members to reveal deeper roots of their cultural diversity so that teams can acknowledge their deeper cultural differences and address any issues collaboratively. Although diversity can create a challenge, the authors argued that it can be teams most important resource for not only recognizing but also for bridging cultural differences and encouraging multicultural innovation. Collective leadership strategies, for example, participatory action planning as well as developmental evaluation, may offer great opportunities for promoting teamwork and multicultural relationships with a global mindset.

Globalization has had a major impact on the US health care. In the context of globalization, the US health care involves both importation of medical services and exporting of exporting of patients (also known as medical tourism). One of the major impacts on this kind of trade is the increased level of efficiency and competition within the US. Globalization has forced the US health care providers to improve the quality of their services and products and afford more choices to the patients. Outsourcing has also impacted the health care system in several ways. Outsourcing of medical tasks has helped the healthcare system to not only improve overall quality but also reduce the cost of operation (Herrick, 2007). Further, it can lead to greater convenience to both the patient and the medical staff. While increased competition can help lower the cost of some medical procedures, an increase in the international competition of talent among medical personnel has a tendency to increase the labor costs. Some primary health care physicians who move out to other countries has exacerbated shortages in the US health care system.

Although different cultural groups of people have been found to have different views of what leadership ought to entail, there is controversy surrounding the issue of transformational or charismatic leadership. It has been argued that attributes related to charismatic and transformational leadership which are necessary for producing outstanding leadership cuts across all cultures. The transformational or charismatic attributes include idealized influence (charisma), inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulations, individualized consideration, and active management by exception, passive management by exception, laissez-faire leadership, and contingent reward (Bass, 1997). Despite these universally endorsed attributes, there are differences due to cultural contingencies. For example, US developed leadership models may not necessarily work well when they are exposed to other cultures even if it is transformational leadership. Transformational leadership has been found to result in more employee satisfaction in the US that in Mexico. In Indonesia, transformational leaders can be boastful about their competence so that they create pride as well as respect for themselves. However, leaders do not boast in Japanese culture. Transformational leadership can also assume different approaches depending on culture: autocratic, directive, democratic, and participative. In the individualistic cultures of North America, transformational leaders are expected to exhibit participative leadership while in collectivist cultures of Asia, leaders are expected to exhibit more of directiveness (Bass, 1997).

As previously discussed in previous paragraphs, critical elements in a modern healthcare organization include cross-cultural communication, cross-cultural leadership, and cultural competency. Attributes of culture one need to cognizant of include geography, gender, spirituality, parent status, indigenous communities, homelessness, substance abuse, language, sexual orientation, age, tribe, race, disability, profession, incarceration, and ethnicity.

In leadership and power, the power-distance relationship is emphasized. High power distance leadership relationships, the leader is more directive than participative while low power distance relationship is characterized by collaborative, participative, or shared leadership (Cakar, & Erturk, 2010). Leaders can also employ technology manage dispersed geographical areas and across cultures. Technology can be enhanced to create virtual leadership. Leaders who emphasize knowledge management identify and address leadership competencies in their organizations for smooth transitions. They also understand that knowledge can be their organizations competitive advantage. Leaders can implement changes by employing various approaches such as transformational leadership, situational leadership, and Agreement and Certainty Matrix. A leader can also employ change management models such as Kotters eight-step model, Lewins three-step model, and Harris five-phase model (Lunenberg, 2010).

References

Bass, B. M. (1997). Does the transactionaltransformational leadership paradigm transcend organizational and national boundaries? American Psychologist, 52(2), 130.

Cakar, N. D., & Erturk, A. (2010). Comparing innovation capability of small and mediumsized enterprises: examining the effects of organizational culture and empowerment. Journal of Small Business Management, 48(3), 325-359.

Dreachslin, J. L., Gilbert, M., & Malone, B. (2013). Diversity and Cultural Competence in Health Care: A Systems Approach. San Francisco.

Herrick, D.M. (2007). How Globalization Is Changing the U.S. Health Care System. National Center for Policy Analysis, November 1, 2007. Retrieved from: http://www.ncpa.org/pub/st304?pg=7Holland, J. B., Malvey, D., & Fottler, M. D. (2009). Healthcare Globalization: A need for virtual leadership. The health care manager, 28(2), 117-123.

Lunenburg, F. C. (2010). Approaches to managing organizational change. International journal of scholarly academic, intellectual diversity, 12(1), 1-10.

MacPhee, M., Chang, L., Lee, D., & Spiri, W. (2013). Global health care leadership developme...