Impact of Leadership Styles in Healthcare Practice

This document discusses the impact of different leadership styles in healthcare practice and how they align with different contexts. It explores the autocratic, laissez-faire, democratic, and bureaucratic leadership styles and their effects on staff morale and service quality. The document also discusses the use of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs theory to increase staff morale and outlines strategies for resolving conflicts in healthcare practice.

Running head: LEADERSHIP
Questions and Answers
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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P4 Explain how theories can support aligning style of management to different contexts
in healthcare practice
Impact of Autocratic Leadership in Healthcare Practice
Effective leadership of healthcare experts has been observed as crucial for reinforcing
client participation, staff engagement and quality of services (Cope and Murray 2017).
According to Stolt et al. (2018), service quality has been recognized as imperative element
for attaining high productivity levels within healthcare settings and has been explained as the
extent to which the potential of attaining the desired health outcomes has been elevated and
aligned with the informed and restructured professional knowledge within healthcare
services. While, there can be found various types of leadership, four types have been evident
to align with BAHS current situation namely, authoritarian, democratic, bureaucratic and
laissez-faire. Studies found that authoritarian leadership style has been perceived regulative,
as leaders tend to make judgements without seeking opinions from staffs and show lack of
collaboration with other employees. Furthermore, leaders following such leadership style
typically exhibit dominance and authority towards other employees, thus leaving no or less
scope for other employees to propose opinions and restraining their abilities (Sfantou et al.
2017). While, on the other hand, the laissez-faire leadership style primarily encompasses
leaders who do not make judgements, thus causing employees to work devoid of any proper
direction or management. However, there can be found practical approach resulting in rare
modifications (Khoshhal and Guraya 2016). Autocratic leadership in healthcare practice has
been illustrated when leaders indulge into decision-making procedures regardless of
considerations of other essential factors. By obtaining insights from BAHS case, it has been
found that Miss Brent with an experience of 20 years has been following autocratic
leadership style and consequentially restricted ideas and opinions of other staffs in support of
service improvement. Ellis (2016) has opined that autocratic leadership styles typically lead

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to ego clash with highly experienced and knowledgeable experts further reducing teams’
creativity, skills and capacity.
Impact of laissez-faire leadership in Healthcare Practice
Meanwhile, laissez-faire leadership style has been unconstructively related to
healthcare management and culture. Stolt et al. (2018) have noted that higher total structural
authorization level linked to a complex safety level and allowing healthcare organizations
have been essentially adding to constructive effects on nursing quality of care. Furthermore,
Sfantou et al. (2017) have found that higher group culture has been linked to elevated safety
environment overall, but hierarchical principles have been linked to reduced welfare climate
signifying that overall organizational culture is highly essential for organizations’ safety and
staff morale. At this juncture, while evaluating leadership styles of three newly employed
managers and application of practical operational management of teams in BAHS, Miss
Jones, Miss Brent and Mr Baktu must empower newly staffed employees and continuously
stimulate their overall efficiency, thus increasing greater degree of innovation and elevate
reduced level of staff morale. According to theoretical explanation of laissez faire leadership,
every individual under this approach contributes to the team thus increasing his or her level
of inclusion and participation to the organization by developing individual exceptional
approach both individually and as team (Stockham 2016).
Impact of democratic leadership in Healthcare Practice
However, on the other hand, through democratic leadership approach, healthcare
leaders and managers include other nurses in the decision-making procedures during
implementation of procedural changes. Furthermore, to capitalize on the efficacy of
democratic leadership, healthcare leaders must provide proper guidance to their employees to
develop specialized as well as unintentional associations with each other, further giving scope
to direct countenance of discrepancy in opinions related to client service quality,

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advancement and health results (Mustafa et al. 2019). Thus, in the case of BAHS, three newly
appointed managers rather than focusing on designating particular associates of the team for
generating resolutions, each available employees must be accessible a prospect to partake by
contributing their individual proficiency to healthcare processes. However, on the other hand,
it is vital to note that contradictory to transformational leadership, the democratic leadership
approach typically leaves final decisions to be made by the leaders, thus limiting potential of
team to influence decisions intended for organizational improvement (Peter 2018). Moreover,
following democratic form of leadership tends to regulate authority over the decision-making
procedure while proposing staffs the chance to have their feedback recognized and approved
by their leaders (Dalrymple 2019).
Impact of Bureaucratic leadership style in Healthcare Practice
In healthcare setting, rules have been designed to guarantee client welfare and staff
morale, thus leaders usually opt for following bureaucratic leadership style for preserving
protocol and guaranteeing utmost adherence to set rules by employees. However, Gordon et
al. (2015) have claimed that because of the inflexible and unchanging nature of bureaucracy,
stringent practice tends to stabilize employee conflict in emergency along with high-volume
and quality care facilities similar to standards of autocratic leadership. Conversely, autocratic
leadership style exhibit more resilience owing to less rigid rules thus increase level of liability
of employees with senior nurse leaders rather than focusing on fixed system of standards and
practices (Sfantou et al. 2017).
Maslow Hierarchy of Needs Theory to Increase Staff Morale
With challenges encountered by healthcare sector related to dysfunction of
operational management, understanding the needs of employees and most importantly
promoting healthcare work setting, interpreting factors which can motivate employees and
ways in which managers can motivate staffs and improve organizational performance has

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become question of increasing concern (Tukhvatulina et al. 2016). Nevertheless, one way to
recognize as well as motivate is to reconsider Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs which
has been used as effective means of understanding human behavioural patterns.
Incentives, Bonus, and the hierarchy of needs
Incentives and bonus have been offering organizations scopes to improve staff morale
and commitment towards the organization. However, Sharan and Weinstein (2016) have
claimed these opportunities, tend to give rise to new challenge amongst employees including
loss of authority and prestige in addition to changes in relationships.
Safety
According to Fallatah and Syed (2018), Maslow’s hierarchy model offers the
foundation for appropriate managerial thinking which primarily accentuates on incentives and
bonuses as a reward for exceptional performance. However, underlying factor related to it
states that such monetary benefits tend to serve as fundamental need in the hierarchy in
comparison to focusing on passion or purpose. Considering reduced level of staff morale and
commitment in BAHS, the currently employed managers must focus on introducing monetary
benefits for newly appointed employees as well as the tenured ones to increase level of
motivation and raise employee retention. Furthermore, Maslow’s theory accentuates the
importance of reducing redundancies and economizing and focuses on offering well-
structured job descriptions by providing information regarding organizations’ monetary status
and predictions.
Social belongingness
While analysing Maslow’s social belongingness, it has been noted that
communication and cultural training apart from offering monetary benefits to employees has
shown greater importance for increasing staff morale. However, in the view of Shanks
(2016), since it is crucial that as healthcare organizations adopts the idea of virtual groups,

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newly employed staffs must be provided with training regarding group dynamics and not
push them into the practice.
Self-esteem
Furthermore, another issue of self-esteem has been linked to employees’ unethical
process to attain success and gaol for being incentivised. As a result, leaders and managers in
healthcare settings must involve staffs in goal-setting as well as decision-making procedures
and provide them adequate opportunities to demonstrate their competencies and skills.
However, while taking into consideration BAHS low employee morale and lack of
management effectiveness, leaders must offer prospects for preparation and development by
utilizing constructive reinforcement program and further focus on monetary rewards and
advantages.
Self-actualization needs
Meanwhile, monetary rewards and benefits have been essentially aligned with self-
actualization needs developed in Maslow’s theory. According to Cope and Murray (2017),
the peak of personal development exhibit importance of strategies, preparation, secondments,
supervising and the prospect for promotion, rewards and recognition which facilitate staff to
exhibit greatest morale, commitment and dedication towards their role (Khoshhal and Guraya
2016). Thus, in the case of BAHS, through the implementation of regular talent planning
gatherings amongst Miss Jones, manager and HR as well as offering choices for example
advanced management programme, BAHS can accomplish employees’ self-actualization
needs while safeguarding they have the proficiency to fill upcoming vacancies.

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P6- Outline the different strategies used to resolve conflict arising between individuals
in different contexts in healthcare practice
Leaders must act with utmost responsiveness in order to be respected. However, vital
part in the process of developing capacity of leaders is to recognize areas of conflict and
appropriate time to seize opportunities within the conflict before giving rise to any disruptive
chaos. At this juncture, leaders must recognize the boundaries and comprehend the risks and
recompenses of conflict determination within the limitations of each of staffs. Such strategy
can be attained with reliable knowledge development sessions where leaders can initiate to
set priority and strengthen performance expectations for each worker. Thus, leaders of
BAHS, must actively engage in coaching and knowledge gathering strategies to mitigate
conflicting situations. In addition to this, instead of showing authority and dominance owing
to more years of experience, managers and leaders must learn to perceive things from diverse
angles by following democratic leadership style and understand employees’ areas of concern
and areas leading to uncertainty.

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