The Impact of Leadership Styles on Healthcare Workplaces

Effective leadership is crucial for maintaining patient safety, ensuring high-quality service, and promoting team unity. However, laissez-faire leadership, which provides little direction or supervision, can lead to negative outcomes such as delayed decision-making and limited opportunities for skill development. In contrast, authentic leadership promotes empowerment, job satisfaction, and performance, but may not always result in optimal communication or trust among team members. The importance of effective leadership is highlighted by the need to address various issues that arise in healthcare settings, including improper patient delivery, inexperienced staff, conflicts, and lack of motivation. Ultimately, incorporating correct leadership styles and strategies can help develop a workplace where all members provide high-quality service, are happy, and content.

Running head: LEADERSHIP IN CLINICAL SETTING
LEADERSHIP IN CLINICAL SETTING
Name of student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

1
LEADERSHIP IN CLINICAL SETTING
Introduction:
The main challenge which is faced by a large number of healthcare organizations is to develop a
proper culture and nurture the culture which will help in ensuring the delivery of continuously
improving different factors within the healthcare setting. These factors would mainly involve
development of high quality service as well as a safe and compassionate healthcare (Kumar et al.
2013). In such a scenario, effective leadership plays one of the most influential factors in shaping
the organizational culture and at the same time also ensuring that the most important leadership
behaviors, qualities and strategies are exhibited by the leaders (al-Bushi et al. 2014). The
following assignment will depict the positive effects of leaderships in healthcare setting,
different issues in leadership and their effective strategies and also different leadership styles.
Three main aims of effective leadership:
The main aim of leaders would be to ensure direction, alignment as well as commitment within
the team members as well as organizations. With the setting up of the directions within the team
members, the leaders need to ensure agreement as well as pride among the members of the team
so that they can easily develop an understanding about what the organization tries to achieve and
help them in being consistent with by the visions, strategies and value of the organizations in
healthcare (Laschinger and Fida 2015). By the aim of alignment, it means that effective
coordination should be ensured by the leaders within the team members and practice integration
within the work. The leaders should also have skills which will help the team members to
practice commitment which means everyone in the healthcare setting should take responsibilities
as well as make their personal priorities to ensure success of the organization by providing the

2
LEADERSHIP IN CLINICAL SETTING
best quality care to the patients which should be safe as well as culturally competent (Gopee and
Galloway 2017).
Advantages of effective leadership in Healthcare services:
Leaders with effective leadership skills ensure a safe, high quality as well as compassionate care
as a topmost priority. They have to make sure that the voices of the patients are provided
importance to at every level. They also make sure that they would build up teams which have
skill to attend patient experience, needs, concern s well as feedback (Wong 2015). An efficient
leader make sure that he or she can provide a supportive, empathic, available, compassionate,
respectful as well as empowering leadership. They set core leadership strategies are to promote
participation as well as involvement of the staff members. They not only provide importance to
the voice of the patients but also make sure that the voices of the staffs are provided significance
as well as their suggestions are also encourages, heard and acted upon across the organization.
They also provide support of various kinds to their staffs so that they can undertake innovation
within safe boundaries (Wong and Laschinger 2013). They also make sure that everyone of the
organization is clear about what they are required to do. Such leaders also provide positive
feedback to the staffs on their good service which make them confidant and encourage them to
work in a more skilled manner. They also insisted on the maintenance of transparency in various
issues like in relation to errors, serious accidents, different problems as well as complaints. They
mainly take mistakes of staffs as opportunities for their learning. Moreover they also effectively
deal with poor performance issues and also maintain correct strategies which help them to handle
aggressive, inappropriate as well as unacceptable behaviors of staffs and patients effectively
(Weaver and Rosen 2014). They also introduce new innovative methods which provide the staffs
with opportunities that promote continuous development of knowledge, skills and abilities of the

3
LEADERSHIP IN CLINICAL SETTING
staff so that they can improve quality of patient care, compassion, safety and also patient
experience. Such leaders always encourage as well as provide motivation and reward innovation
with many new introductions of new and improved ways of working (Lin et al. 2015).
Issues faced by leaders and effective leadership strategies:
Improper service delivery:
Often with the advancement of time, healthcare professionals need to adapt themselves with the
current trends of practices and match up their knowledge with the modern technological skills to
provide best care to patients. However there are many professionals who do not often develop
the knowledge of the modern technologies which hamper the quality of care to patients.
Moreover it is also seen that many professionals do not have proper communication skill with
other members that affect the all over service delivery of the teams to the patient (Laschinger and
Fida 2014). Such patient should be given proper training on the communication development of
skills to overcome their challenges. Patient care is a team effort that depends upon the
collaboration of doctors, nurses, physical therapists as well as other specialists. In such scenarios
it becomes extremely important for the leaders to unify the teams and ensure that every
individual are performing their own responsibilities and at the same time also ensuring the skill
development of the nurses (Karamitri, Talias and Bellali 2017). Moreover, leaders also help in
developing the onset of coordination of the efforts among the team members which not only
enhance quality of care but also helps in redistribution of the pressures on the nurses. In
altogether, the leaders help to improve the patient safety in organizations.
Handling inexperienced nurses:

4
LEADERSHIP IN CLINICAL SETTING
It is often seen that new nurses do not have the proper skills for quick clinical reasoning, priority
setting and lack confidence in handling patient. Moreover they also lack confidence in decision
making. They often develop complexes in the new setting and proper bonding with other seniors
often takes time. They often also face various ethical and legal dilemmas as they are new to the
setting and lack experiences to handle such cases efficiently. In such a scenario, they feel their
job to be creating more pressure on them. Some of them tend to leave the profession, others face
burning out, physical deterioration, mental instability and others (Yoder-wise 2014). In such
cases, leaders often have to develop innovative methods so that they can rightly make the
professionals develop competency in their care. Often such nurses require continuous monitoring
in every of the activities they do for the patient so that the leaders can help them to correct their
mistakes in their working techniques and provide them the knowledge of the correct ways.
Moreover, they also need to provide them with professional development classes which help
them to overcome the lack of confidence in their work. The leaders have to ensure that they are
placed under proper experienced nurses so that they get the right help form their senior registered
nurses (Read and Laschinger 2015). The entire procedure requires huge time of the leaders and
hence it becomes an issue as leaders often have to perform multitasking in healthcare. However,
with positive scheduling and setting priorities and making time table will help the leaders to
provide the best service to the organization.
Conflict management:
The nest issue that often provides a hard time to the leaders is conflict management. It has been
seen in many cases that often different type’s conflicts arise among the staffs in team that
hampers effective service delivery. Often poor communication skill result in conflict and as a
result of this, blame game results which often become difficult for the leaders to handle.

5
LEADERSHIP IN CLINICAL SETTING
Communication breakdown also result in development of conflicts between members which
breaks trusts of the members and they tend to affect the carer of the patients resulting in
improper medication administrations, long waiting time of the patients and, any others. Power
struggles between different professionals of various ranks may create complexes affecting their
mental stability as well as their confidence leading to deceased job satisfaction (McCan, Graves
and Cox 2014). In such issues, leaders play a strong role in helping the teams to overcome the
barriers through different strategies like team meetings, allowing each other to only admit each
other’s positive sides, developing communication skills, learning proper methods of delegation,
developing monitoring session for the staffs and others. Calling team meetings and encouraging
the staff members to speak openly about their concerns as well as the different difficulties they
face while working with their mates, allowing proper suggestions, counseling, and advices to
overcome such barriers for the well being of patients – all will lead to improvement of working
relationship and hence better patient care (Reem, Kitsantas & Maddox 2014).
Lack of motivation due to work stress:
The works of healthcare professional are often hectic and full of high levels of stresses. They
have to continuously consciously about every patient and have to be always ready on their toes.
They have to be alert and have to work all round the clock as they do not have the luxury to
choose their work and therefore they have to provide equal care to all patients. Often such long
stretches of work, over timings, requirements of extra working hours by the organizations to
provide service to high number of patients often become stressful for them. They develop
physical disorder like fatigue, back pain, headache and many others which affect their
concentration of work. Moreover, they also develop mental disorders like depression, anxiety,
sleep disorders and many others. Hence, all these may lead to compromised service delivery

6
LEADERSHIP IN CLINICAL SETTING
which may lead to unintentional errors, aggression in nurses or even lack of enthusiasm to work
of their parents. Hence here leaders pay a very important role in making them to stick to their
commitments towards patients (Daly et al. 2014). Leader helps their charges to stay on tract and
constantly remind them of the commitment towards the duty of patients’ recoveries. Leaders also
provide assistance as well as advice when their staff members face a dilemma or face a
complicated case of a patient so that they do not develop the feeling of loneliness or do not feel
pressurized of the responsibility of the entire patient on their shoulders- rather they feel that they
have companions helping them in their work who are providing them constant support for their
dedication. When such leaders express confidence in them and also on their team members
providing them feedbacks and encouraging them, got their good work, healthcare staffs feel
empowered (Lartey et al. 2014). They feel motivated by the leaders who help them to take upon
new initiatives and contribute their best efforts. Moreover leaders should also found new ways
through strategies planning so that proper work life balance can be established for the staffs by
job rotations, flexible shifts, allocating stand-bys for staffs requiring leaves and many others.
Often incentive and reward plans are also shown to bring positive outcomes by making them
motivated.
Improper attitude towards the profession:
Even when nurses join the profession with high amount of zeal and enthusiasm, researchers
suggest that over the course of time, they tend to lose their flexibilities to match up with their
situations and in turn perform activities which do not match with the nursing ideals of healthcare
professionals. Many of them tend to lose their compassionate approach and provide more rigid
approach due to development of stress and boredom form work which affects patient’s autonomy
and dignity. They tend to develop a burnout and as a result they do not handle many adverse

7
LEADERSHIP IN CLINICAL SETTING
cases with equal amount of grace, empathy and education which they did before (Aarons et al.
2015). They tend to develop a feeling of exhaustion which prevents them from providing the best
quality service to the patients. Here, the leaders play a great role in maintaining a positive role
model whom the staffs should look upon in their profession. Leaders in such scenario make
themselves a role model which inspires the healthcare staffs to meet and exceed their highest
expectations. Leaders in such scenario take an active role for themselves where they tend to
honor the profession’s ethical principles, putting the patient’s needs as the most important part of
the professions and treating their colleague with the high amount of respect irrespective of their
positions and experiences. In these ways they establish a standard of conduct as well as
successfully make themselves a role model for the other staffs to follow and be encouraged.
Moreover, when leaders follow the proper leadership styles, it usually becomes more evident that
they have to less instruct their team members. Team members automatically get into the flow of
work without their leaders instructing them to take their work responsibly as they themselves act
as a role model whom they follow in order to accomplish their task and hence become victorious
in providing the best quality care to the patients and helps in developing the organization’s
reputations (Laschinger et al. 2015).
Different leadership theories and how they impact service provided by team members:
Proper management of the healthcare professionals by the leaders helps in modifying the
performance of the staff towards betterment which in turn helps in influencing the patient
outcomes. Different types of leadership styles are followed over the years by different leaders
which have either been appreciated or criticized by researchers over the years. The first one is
the transactional leadership where the leaders mainly provide importance to supervisions,
organization as well as group performance. These leaders thoroughly monitors the team

8
LEADERSHIP IN CLINICAL SETTING
members’ works to find faults or other deviations and helps in promoting compliance if the team
members by either rewards of punishments. This type of leadership is extremely helpful in crisis
and emergency situation ensuring active participation from all staffs. The second type of
leadership is called the transformational leadership which is appreciated by researchers all over
the world. In this type of leadership, the behaviors of the leaders transform and inspire the
members who help them to perform beyond their expectations at the same time of transcending
elf interest for the good of the patients and also for the organization (Mintz and Stoller 2014).
Such inspirational motivation involves providing a vision of the future to the members and also
provides attention to the needs as well as he skills of the workers. The nest form of leadership is
the democratic leadership which also is appreciated by many professionals. This style
encourages open communication as well as staff participation in decision making. To such
leaders developing relationship with the workers is important where they mainly set focus on the
improvement of the processes and systems rather than on the mistakes made by the staffs. Just as
they hear the voices of the workers making them feel a part of their organization and developing
a sense of respect, they also provide efficient feedback to the workers and help them to modify
their skills. The nest form of leadership which is not much appreciated and has negative
outcomes is the authoraritarian leadership where the leaders make all the decisions without
considering any input from the staff. Negative reinforcements and punishments are provided
which affect the working styles of staffs. Mistakes are not tolerated and therefore blame is placed
in the staff rather than blaming the faulty processes. All theses affect the emotions and feelings
of the workers mainly them depressed and therefore they seem to withdraw themselves from the
systems. Their development of skills and knowledge are also restricted that affect their career.
However this types of leadership show positive outcome in emergency situations where there is

9
LEADERSHIP IN CLINICAL SETTING
little time for discussion. However, they do not result in development of trust and proper
communication which is very important for carrying team work effective (Castel et al. 2015).
Laissez-faire Leadership is also severely criticized as this type provides little as well as no
direction or supervision of the members and prefers to take hands of approach trusting that all
members are capable to take their own responsibilities of their work trusting that they do not
need guidance. The negative outcomes are that decisions are not made on time and it gives very
few scopes to member’s to gather knowledge and develop new skills.
From the entire discussion it can be concluded that effective leadership has many
important t contributions out of which is the proper maintenance of patient safety and ensuring
high quality service. They help in developing unity among the team members so that proper
communication is ensured along with providing of innovative strategies that help them in
developing their skill and knowledge. Different issues may arise like improper patient delivery,
inexperienced working nurses’ concern, conflict in workplace, power struggle, and lack of
motivation at workplace, exhaustion and many others. The leaders need to incorporate correct
leadership styles and come out with efficient strategies which would handle all the issues and
develop a workplace where all the members provide the highest quality service, are happy and
are contented. Moreover this would also help to increase the reputation of the organization as
well.
References:

10
LEADERSHIP IN CLINICAL SETTING
Aarons, G.A., Ehrhart, M.G., Farahnak, L.R. and Hurlburt, M.S., 2015. Leadership and
organizational change for implementation (LOCI): a randomized mixed method pilot study of a
leadership and organization development intervention for evidence-based practice
implementation. Implementation Science, 10(1), p.11.
Al-Balushi, S., Sohal, A. S., Singh, P. J., Al Hajri, A., Al Farsi, Y. M., and Al Abri, R. 2014.
Readiness factors for lean implementation in healthcare settings–a literature review. Journal of
health organization and management, 28(2), 135-153.
Castel, E. S., Ginsburg, L. R., Zaheer, S., & Tamim, H. (2015). Understanding nurses’ and
physicians’ fear of repercussions for reporting errors: clinician characteristics, organization
demographics, or leadership factors?. BMC health services research, 15(1), 326.
Daly, J., Jackson, D., Mannix, J., Davidson, P. and Hutchinson, M., 2014. The importance of
clinical leadership in the hospital setting. Journal of Healthcare Leadership.
Gopee, N., and Galloway, J. 2017. Leadership and management in healthcare. Sage.
Karamitri, I., Talias, M.A. and Bellali, T., 2017. Knowledge management practices in healthcare
settings: a systematic review. The International journal of health planning and
management, 32(1), pp.4-18.
Kumar, R. D. 2013. Leadership in healthcare. Anaesthesia and Intensive Care Medicine, 14(1),
39-41.
Lartey, S., Cummings, G. and Profetto‐McGrath, J., 2014. Interventions that promote retention
of experienced registered nurses in health care settings: a systematic review. Journal of nursing
management, 22(8), pp.1027-1041.

11
LEADERSHIP IN CLINICAL SETTING
Laschinger, H. K. S., and Fida, R. 2015. Linking nurses’ perceptions of patient care quality to
job satisfaction: the role of authentic leadership and empowering professional practice
environments. Journal of Nursing Administration, 45(5), 276-283.
Laschinger, H.K.S. and Fida, R., 2014. A time-lagged analysis of the effect of authentic
leadership on workplace bullying, burnout, and occupational turnover intentions. European
Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 23(5), pp.739-753.
Laschinger, H.K.S., Borgogni, L., Consiglio, C. and Read, E., 2015. The effects of authentic
leadership, six areas of worklife, and occupational coping self-efficacy on new graduate nurses’
burnout and mental health: A cross-sectional study. International Journal of Nursing
Studies, 52(6), pp.1080-1089.
Lin, P.Y., MacLennan, S., Hunt, N. and Cox, T., 2015. The influences of nursing
transformational leadership style on the quality of nurses’ working lives in Taiwan: a cross-
sectional quantitative study. BMC nursing, 14(1), p.33.
McCann, J.T., Graves, D. and Cox, L., 2014. Servant leadership, employee satisfaction, and
organizational performance in rural community hospitals. International journal of Business and
management, 9(10), p.28.
Mintz, L.J. and Stoller, J.K., 2014. A systematic review of physician leadership and emotional
intelligence. Journal of graduate medical education, 6(1), pp.21-31.
Read, E.A. and Laschinger, H.K., 2015. The influence of authentic leadership and empowerment
on nurses’ relational social capital, mental health and job satisfaction over the first year of
practice. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 71(7), pp.1611-1623.

12
LEADERSHIP IN CLINICAL SETTING
Reem, A. D., Kitsantas, P., & Maddox, P. J. (2014). The impact of residency programs on new
nurse graduates' clinical decision-making and leadership skills: A systematic review. Nurse
Education Today, 34(6), 1024-1028.
Weaver, S.J., Dy, S.M. and Rosen, M.A., 2014. Team-training in healthcare: a narrative
synthesis of the literature. BMJ Qual Saf, 23(5), pp.359-372.
Wong, C.A. and Laschinger, H.K., 2013. Authentic leadership, performance, and job
satisfaction: the mediating role of empowerment. Journal of advanced nursing, 69(4), pp.947-
959.
Wong, C.A., 2015. Connecting nursing leadership and patient outcomes: state of the
science. Journal of nursing management, 23(3), pp.275-278.
Yoder-Wise, P.S., 2014. Leading and Managing in Nursing-E-Book. Elsevier Health Sciences.