Effective Leadership in Contemporary Healthcare: Challenges and Solutions

This report discusses the challenges faced by contemporary healthcare in Australia and the factors that enhance effective leadership. It also aligns interviewees' responses with transformational leadership style and discusses its potential outcomes in healthcare setting.

Introduction
In general, leadership can be defined as the attribute that enables an individual to guide his
or her subordinates to achieve a particular goal by working beyond their potential. (Weiss &
Tappen 2015). It is challenging to be an effective leader in the workplace, as an excellent
leader need to see above the plethora of facilities, policies, protocols and procedures to
maintain the routine work in the organisation. They also need to overcome the bureaucratic
influences to achieve the goal of organisation and help in its successful development and
growth (Daly, Speedy & Jackson 2015). When leadership definition is extended in the
nursing context, it can be stated that the leader is the person who can provide support,
motivation, coordination and resources to facilitate the followers. This, in turn, help the
organisation go forward and accomplish collective objectives (Australian College of Nursing
(ACN) 2015). The rapidly changing demands in healthcare make it more difficult and
challenging for the caregivers to provide high quality patient-oriented care. Therefore, it
requires flexible and talented leaders to ensure that safe care and optimal patient outcomes
are achieved by allocated proper staff in the workplace(Cummings et al. 2008).
The first section of this report will discuss the main concerns about current health
care system in Australia. It will also portray the most significant factors that can boost the
effectiveness of leadership in health care and the ways they affect both patients and health
professionals. There are five people who have been interviewed. One of them is the General
Practitioner(GP). The other interviewees are two Registered Nurse (RN), who are
undertaking the Master degree, one Physiotherapist and one General Manager in Aged care
facility. In the second section of this report, the author aligns the interviewees’ responses
with a particular leadership style and thereby discuss the potential outcomes of the chosen
and preferred leadership style in contemporary healthcare setting.
Issues the contemporary healthcare is facing
Aging population Nurse to Patient ratios
Indigenous people to access appropriate
health care
Difficult to attracting health professional to
work in rural areas
Increased diversity in patient’s culture Medication errors
Increased chronic illness cost Staff retention (poor nursing staff wellbeing)
Funding inefficiency Insufficient training and support
Shortage of health professional Increased paperwork (including electronic-
based), less time for patient care

From the above interviews, it can be seen that the healthcare system is now facing a
number of challenges in Australia. Armstrong et al. 2007 has stated that “The next
Australian Government will confront major challenges in the funding and delivery of health
care”. With the development of current healthcare system, it is observed that high average
life expectancy and low rate of infant mortality is mainly leading to increased aging
population and burden of chronic illness. The outdated organisation management is also
unable to adapt to the rapid expansion of healthcare needs (Armstrong et al. 2007). In
addition, chronic diseases also are one of the main issues and are mostly suffered by
Indigenous communities. The lack of access to primary, acute and rehabilitation services are
also identified from the interview. Therefore, it urgently requires the establishment of better
links between fundamental healthcare services and Indigenous communities(Armstrong et
al. 2007).
Because of limited resources outside of metropolitan areas, the health professionals
are seen to be unwilling to work in those areas. Here, they cannot meet the criteria for social
lives and their families. This affects their decision, as they cannot decide where to live and
practise. This results in significant shortage of GP, dentist, nurses and others outside the
metropolitan cities, especially in Indigenous communities. Therefore, it is important to
develop innovative methods to attract health professionals for working in rural and remote
areas.(Armstrong et al. 2007).
Education is the cornerstone for all health professional to provide safe and quality
care to patients. Researchers have provided the fact that information that is acquired by
people in university or the college gets expired in 5 years after graduation (Shahhosseini &
Hamzehgardeshi 2015). Therefore, continuing education is important as it provides the
chance for health professionals’ to update their knowledge, improve their skills and modify
their thinking. However, as identified by Shahhosseini & Hamzehgardeshi (2015), heavy
duties in the workplace, time constraints, lack of managers’ support, huge expenses and
many others are among the reasons why nurses are unable to spend enough time in
continuing education.
From the above discussion, it becomes evident that an effective leadership is
required to deal with the challenges and issues that are faced by healthcare professionals in
Australia.
Factors enhancing effective leadership
Personal Qualities: Behaviours:
Self-awareness Support staff
Empathy Act as a mentor-being a model for your

team members
Positive attitude Continuing develop self and others
Ability to handle stress Motivation
Communication effectiveness
The three most common factors that are required by individuals to portray effective
leadership (identified by the interviewees) are acting as a mentor, helping in continuing
education and develop effective communication skills.
Be visible, be mentor
One of the interviewee said:” When I want to seek advice or anything I am not sure, I do not
know whom to ask as the leader is not here. At that time I feel helpless”.
When staffs have less contact with the leader, the leaders will have fewer opportunities to
influence the former by using their leadership skills. Also, the followers do not have the
scope to observe their leaders. Therefore, their gap in knowledge remains unattended.
Therefore, it is crucial for healthcare organisation to understand that the most effective way
to enhance the efficiency in workplace is developing visible and accessible leadership
(Cummings et al. 2008). As Rolfe 2011 stated:” You have to be a visible role model, acting
as a mentor and assisting follower to be leaders”.
This statement also supported by Daly, Speedy & Jackson 2015, as they identified that the
mentor-protégé relationship is extremely important. It is a developmental relationship from
where both mentor and protégé can get benefit from. Mentor must be available to the
protégé all the time to provide unconditional support, honest feedback and be a role model.
Protégé observes and interacts with mentor to improve competencies and this in turn
increases job satisfaction. Meanwhile, mentor get safiscation by assisting followers in
obtaining their career goals. This in turn enhances their own leadership traits. All the benefits
that take place ultomately lead the organisation to be more productive. This also decreases
staff turnover. Furthermore, lots of successful mentors employ transformational leadership
style in which they are seen to motivate the subbordinates making them work beyond their
potential and thereby help them in achieving their goals (Daly, Speedy & Jackson 2015).
Continuing education
“I think keeping on learning is a very important factor as it helps to promote the
effectiveness of leadership. I always lack of self-confidence as I’m not sure my practice is
the best or not. I feel that i still have lot to learn.” quoted from one of the interviewee.
Learning does not stop when people leave school. New and better strategies to care for
patients are developed continuously. It is the professional’s responsibility to critically think

and analyse the latest information, and make decisions whether the new strategies are
better for the patient than current ones(Weiss & Tappen, 2015). Cumming et al. (2008)
stated that higher education and experience leads to the increasing of leadership
effectiveness. Continuing educational activities such as participating in leadership
development programs demonstrates one of the most outstanding factor that contributes to
boost effective leadership (Cummings et al. 2008). Daly, Speedy & Jackson (2015) also
reported that most leaders look forward to renew and recharge themselves on a regular
basis and this procedure helps them in reaching their objectives.
Effective leaders not only continue to develop and improve themselves but also motivate
others to seek more knowledge like them. When leaders are learning and developing new
skills, they should demonstrate, model and use these skills into workplace in order to
increase the care quality and make the organisation more productive. They also declare that
the leaders who have the transformational leadership style tend to align their subordinates
towards continuing leadership education (Cummings et al., 2008) thereby enriching their
lives as well.
Effective communicate skills
“We are working in a highly interpersonal relationship-based environment. We are caring for
people, interact with people and cooperate with people. So I think good communication skills
are vital to achieve effective leadership.” quoted from one interviewee.
For leaders, effective communication is a key element of their role (Huber 2014). Weiss &
Tappen 2015, stated that effective communication should include listening to others,
stimulating information exchange and providing feedback. Listening is the only effective way
to find out what other people wants and needs. Lots of leaders fail as they do not listen what
the others are trying to tell them. Leaders also need to maintain the communication channels
and make sure staffs are successfully using them to exchange information. This is because
many misunderstandings and errors occur when people do not share enough imformation.
Everyone needs to get feedback regarding their performance. Frequent honest feedback, no
(irrespective of positive or negative), is needed to assist follower to improve their
performance by pointing out their pros and cons.
Furthermore, leaders are in charge of developing vision, and this vision requires to be
communicated as an attractive picture (Huber 2014). The effective leaders need to
communicate this vision to the group and motivate them towards that vision (ACN 2015;
Weiss and Tappen 2015). This action will generate inspiration that will boost followers in
adhering to their goals when situation turns too difficult (Weiss and Tappen 2015). Moreover,
if leaders can motivate the followers in creating the particular vision, this will make them
more satisfied. They will develop the potential to be more creative and innovative in their

work output (Weiss and Tappen 2015). Cummings et al. (2008) also stated that there is a
positive relationship between the leader’s motivation and effective of leadership. In
transformational leadership, leaders are more likely to communicate a vision, then motivate
and influence the follower’s to adhere to the vision (Hutchinson & Jackson 2013).
In summary, as discussed above, the three common factors all contribute to enhance
nursing leadership and these factors are all related to a particular leadership style -
transformational leadership - that will be identified and discussed below.
Transformational leadership
The transformational leadership has been described as a leader who motivates and engages
the followers to develop their skills and knowledge by influencing a change in perceptions
and by creating a vision (Huber 2014). Daly, Speedy and Jackson (2015); Hutchinson and
Jackson (2013) also supported that this leadership displays a human-capital-enhancing
resource management style. Personal charisma, inspirational motivation, individualised
consideration, and intellectual stimulation are four distinct factors of transformational leaders
that help them to generate greater effort, effectiveness and satisfaction among followers.
In transformational leadership, communication is a vital section and it works by creating a
vision to motivate and inspire followers and help them to move forward together. As
described by Rolfe (2011),”transformational leaders are the communication champions and
ambassadors for the organization’s vision”. Furthermore, Weiss & Tappen 2015 explained in
more details that as transformational leaders can share their vision in a meaningful and
exciting way, it can decrease the negative emotion and inspires commitment in followers. In
addition, a successful transformational leader acts as a mentor to empower followers, and
allows follower to grow and develop into future leaders. It is important to involve the followers
in decision-making even in the smallest decision. This allows them to learn, get experiences
and have some control over the process on how the goal is to be reached. As a result, the
followers develop trust and a sense of belonging in the organisation. They feel valued and
morally boosted (Rolfe 2011).
This healthy work relationship leads to increased staff loyalty, commitment, performance and
job satisfaction with decreased absenteeism. Clearly, this leadership is a great strategy for
staff recruitment and retention(Rolfe 2011).