Leadership and Change in Public Health

Leadership and Change in Public Health
LEADERSHIP AND CHANGE IN
PUBLIC HEALTH – 987358
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Leadership and Change in Public Health
ABC Healthcare Organisation is a private sector company that has been operating in the
United States for more than 30 years. The company was originally founded by a group of
doctors in 1985 by starting a multi-speciality clinic, which grew out to be one of the most
hygienic and quality health care service providers in its career. With the success achieved by
the clinic, it soon began to expand its business and turned out into a multi-speciality hospital,
which now has a workforce of around 124 doctors, 548 nurses and 30 physiotherapists. Each
year, the organisation offers healthcare services to almost 1 million patients in the united
states and has been regarded as one of the best companies to work for in the industry.
Recently, the company has started to face extreme competitions from well-established
hospital chains, which has lowered down the market share of the organisation and is making
most of its loyal patients shift to other hospitals in exchange for better healthcare services and
information. As a result, the board members have conducted several meetings in the past and
have been implementing employee feedback and customer feedback surveys to find out the
root cause of the pertaining issues.
Through the survey questionnaires, it has been identified that the hospital lacks a proper
infrastructure and technological solutions to provide better quality health care services to the
patients, which is being offered by the competitors and also by most of the new entrants in
the market (Open MRS, 2017). The patients have reported a longer waiting time while taking
appointments and waiting for their consultation turn while the employees have reported that
they do not get easy access to information, which causes a delay in the services that they have
to offer to the patients. Further, it has also been discovered that there is a lack of a system that
could help the employees in recording data and using it to maintain effective relations with
the patients. On the basis of the above findings, the board members have decided to undergo
a major technological change to acquire a new infrastructure along with an ERP business
module, which would handle all the major and minor operations, such as finances,
appointments, human resources, customer relationship management, etc. for the organisation
(Mucheleka & Halonen, 2015).
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Leadership and Change in Public Health
Leadership, in simple words, is defined as the ability of an individual to lead people or to
make others follow (Silva, 2016). Leaders have the ability to influence and guide their
followers by creating a unified vision, motivating the followers and by keeping them
inspired. In the contemporary business world, leadership has been considered to be highly
important as effective leadership can help the employers in ensuring higher performance in
the market and in the achievement of higher organisational goals and objectives (Antonakis
& Day, 2017). The management of the organisation is completely aware about the difficulties
associated with a change program and are taking all the necessary steps to ensure higher
chances of success of the change program being implemented. The management has decided
to form a multidisciplinary team that would look after the planning, execution,
implementation and monitoring of the change program. In this report, we will discuss
different leadership strategies and the impact that they can have on the change program in
ABC Healthcare organisation. Leadership plays a vital role in change management. Some of
the key areas where leaders can act as game changers are discussed below:
First of all, effective organisational leaders act as sponsors of a change program as they
prevent a change from fading away by keeping it alive in the followers. They make sure that
change programs do not die because of lack of attention. They act as a champion and are able
to utilise their complete potential to make a change more successful (Stagl, 2011). Secondly,
leaders of an organisation have the ability to lead their followers during a change program by
setting up examples. Leaders usually study the change themselves initially and promote a
change only if they are convinced themselves. Once they are convinced that a change is
beneficial for the stakeholders, they start to demonstrate a behaviour or an attitude that makes
it easier to embrace a change, which is then also adopted by their followers. As the followers
have a tendency to closely observe and monitor their leader, they become more likely to
accept a change when their leader is setting examples for them (Deshler, 2016). Thirdly, one
of the most important area where the leaders can promote an organisational change is the
establishment of a communication channel between the management and the employees. In a
change program, leaders can act as the face and the voice of the program. They act as a
source for sharing relevant information at the right time and keeping the employees updated
on all important matters (Benoit, 2017). During a change program, there can be a lot of
ambiguity in the workplace and in such conditions, employees often tend to listen more to
their leaders. As a result, an effective leader can enhance the quality of communication
during a change program and can make it easier for the management to implement a change.
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Leadership and Change in Public Health
Fourthly, effective leaders can promote engagement amongst the employees during a change
program. Leaders of business organisations have the ability to create a sense of urgency and
engage the people by communicating the benefits of a change program. They offer
recognition and rewards to the people and can ensure higher levels of engagement. At times,
it can be difficult for the management to directly deal with the employees during a change
program. In such times, effective leaders can motivate the people to come out of their
comfort zones and to embrace a change (Abbas & Asghar, 2010). Lastly, leaders have the
ability to delegate authority in the workplace and hold people accountable for the change.
They make sure that people are not able to get away without embracing a change and try to
discover the underlying reasons that act as obstacles for the employees to accept a change
(Skipprichard, 2017). Clearly, leaders are one of the most important change agents in a
business set up and have the ability to turn things around when a change program experiences
difficulties in its execution or implementation. This also makes it important for business
organizations, especially the ones that are operating in the healthcare industry, to develop
efficient leaders in the workplace and enlist their support whenever a major or a minor
change is required to be implemented in the workplace (Gleeson, 2018).
In order to ensure successful implementation of a change program and also to sustain it,
effective leadership is imperative in healthcare organizations. Leaders, in a business setup,
have their own qualities and style of leading others, which is termed as a leadership style. In
general, leadership styles have been categorized into autocratic leadership, democratic
leadership, transformational leadership, transactional leadership and servant leadership. The
role that each of the leadership styles, along with their pros and cons, in bringing about an
organisational change is discussed below:
Autocratic leaders are the ones that have a tendency to exercise a complete control over the
employees of an organisation. Such leaders do not value individual opinion and neither do
they ask their followers to provide a feedback on important business matters (Khan, et al.,
2015). They mostly dictate their own decision to their followers and do not try to engage their
followers in the decision making process. Usually, this type of leadership style is preferred in
organizations that do not have a large workforce and decision making have to be quick. A
number of experts have argued that an autocratic leadership style can hinder the progress of
an organisation in the long run, especially when it comes to change management. As
suggested by the pioneers of the subject of change management, such as Kotter and Kurt
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