Clinical Leadership: Leadership Styles in Modern Healthcare Systems

This essay critically analyzes the statement that a single leadership style cannot be universally applied in healthcare, drawing upon various management and leadership theories. It defines clinical leadership and its importance in improving healthcare outcomes, referencing the roles of clinical leaders in inspiring, setting visions, and utilizing their expertise to meet patient needs. The essay explores three key leadership styles: aesthetic, congruent, and transformational leadership, examining their applications and limitations in the context of clinical nursing. It highlights how each style contributes to effective leadership, while also acknowledging that a combined approach is necessary to address the complexities of modern healthcare settings. The essay emphasizes that effective clinical leadership maximizes positive results for both nurses and patients, considering the challenges of increasing customer expectations and costs in developed nations.

Running head: CLINICAL LEADERSHIP
Clinical Leadership
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In different field of the contemporary developed societies, health care is facing
several workforce challenges like the change in the consumer expectations, the change
in their demands, the fiscal constraints, and the ever increased demands for accessing
the care, the mandate to improve the patient-centred care and the safety and security of
the hospital care system. Effective governance and leadership are the two most crucial
factors to aid to the efforts for increasing the effective management of care in the health
care setting. As per Mannix, Wilkes and Daly (2015), “with the complexities of modern
organisations, one particular leadership style cannot be the only model followed,
regardless of the situation”. This essay shall elaborate on critically analysing and
discussing this statement drawing upon different theories of management and leadership
for examining this statement and supporting the argument with reference to clinical
leadership.
Clinical leadership has been defined by McSherry and Pearce (2016), as the term
that summarise the concept of the clinical health care staffs who undertake the roles of
leadership- inspiring, setting and promoting vision and values, using their clinical skills
and experience for ensuring the needs of the customers (patients). The hospital care
systems around the developed societies continue to copeup with the ever increasing and
changing demands of customers for the hospital services and increasing costs. With the
same, the service design inefficiencies such as outmoded models of the care aid to the
demands of sustainable funding.. However, effective clinical leadership is associated
with a good variety of functions. It is very necessary for the health care systems,
including the achievement of the objectives of the health reform, the system
performance, system integrity, the timely care delivery as well as efficiency falls under
the integral components of the hospital care system (Bolsin et al., 2018). The role that
effective clinical leadership plays in the production of high quality of the hospital care

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system, providing efficient and safe care are reiterated in different scholarly literatures
and in many publicly available government reports. As per Misso et al. (2016), clinical
leadership and engagement are important for improving the safety and quality. In
United Kingdom, clinical leadership has always been identified as the key driver of the
health service performance.
Notwithstanding this fact, it is to mention that leadership in the health care
setting is always very complicated. As per several authors and researchers, it faced very
unique contextual challenges. For instance, Spurgeon et al. (2015) have claimed that the
aspects of leadership and governance are Sui generic in the hospital caring. The health
care setting have different characteristic. There, the chief executive is not the one and
only segment of the leadership of the organisation, which is directly accountable to the
governing body. In the health care setting, due to different legal and professional role of
the licensed independent practitioners within the company like the medical staffs, are
also accountable to the governing body for the care and service that is provided.
Therefore, the overall responsibility of safety and quality of service and care is on the
governing body. At the same time, it gas an oversight role in the integration of the work
and responsibilities of its chief executive, the senior managers and the medical staffs
into a system that attains the objectives of financial stability, ethical behaviour, high
quality care and the community service.
According to Storey (2016), in the field of clinical leadership, leadership can be
described in different ways and can be influenced by a wide range of factors including
the context and culture. The modern health care settings are undoubtedly very complex
and a single type of leadership style cannot be put in place, regardless of the situation.
In regard to the clinical world of nursing, there are three types of leadership that can be

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helpful- the aesthetic leadership, the congruent leadership and the transformational
leadership.
Aesthetic leadership is concerned with the process in which the aesthetic leaders
perform leadership functions within the cultures, groups and communities that are often
the outside established positions of authority. It is to note that aesthetics are basically
concerned with the questions of notion and beauty of the universal tastes. It is one of the
most promising approaches in the studies of leadership. According to Mannix, Wilkes
and Daly (2015), “Aesthetic leaders are those leaders who count on tacit knowledge, a
type of knowledge that resembles sensory/aesthetic knowing, and is gained from deep
indefinable know-how that defies a logical explanation”. In regard to the clinical
nursing, this type of leadership style supports the effectiveness of the clinical leaders,
particularly with the recognition of importance and relevance of the art of nursing
practise. Being a model of leadership, this type of leadership is not antithetical to both
the congruent and the transformational leadership and at the same time, can go a long
way for overcoming the identified shortcomings of this specific leadership models.
Furthermore, congruent leadership is the style of leadership that is best suited for
the understanding of the clinical leadership as it defines the concept of leadership in
terms of the matching in between the deeds, actions and different activities of the leader
and his or her beliefs, values and principles (Ghulam, 2016). It is to note that this style
of leadership was adapted from the model of Situational leadership. It was identified
that this type of leadership takes place when a good understanding is gained regarding
the aspects that are related to the leaders and their followers and the setting in which
they belong. According to McSherry and Pearce (2016), the leaders who are considered
to be the experts in clinical setting and the ones who showcase a congruence in this
setting are guided by their caring passion and at the same time, they seek for

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empowering their colleagues, instead of elevating their personal status. According to
Stanley (2016), the congruent leadership gives a good and strong foundation for the
clinical leaders in the field of nursing as it reflects the important values and objectives
of nursing and at the same times, places a patient focused as its major consideration,
ahead of the medical officers and managers. However, it is to note that there are certain
limitations of these theories and models of leadership. The transformational leadership
lack in a balanced gender outlook and give a very narrow representation of the cultural
values and beliefs. At the same time, it fails to address the altruistic behaviours of the
leaders and also, lack in consideration for the emotional, aesthetic and emotional
dimensions of leadership (Fischer, 2016). Congruent leadership too lack in several
aspects. It does not encourage change and also does not consider creativity as a valued
attribute. Hence, a combined of both these leadership cannot go a long way. Therefore,
a new model needs to be adapted in the clinical field.
As per the transformational leadership theory, leaders work with the team
members for identifying the necessary change and for creating a vision for guiding the
change by means of inspiration as well as by executing the change in the tandem along
with the committed members of a particular group. According to Bottomley et al.
(2016), the transformational leadership is a central part of full range leadership model.
These types of leaders are inspiring, visionary, thoughtful and daring. This type of
leadership focus on how the leaders can create a positive and valuable change in the
organisation. As a style of leadership, the transformational leadership has been seen to
be compatible with the ways nurses act in their different clinical settings. For instance,
in the field of the mental health, the processes of transformational leadership among the
nurses fosters the team involvement of the customers in the delivery of effective care as
well as the in the growth of important interpersonal skills of the nurses who work in the

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mental health settings. Furthermore, as per the recent studies it is seen that
transformational leadership supports higher job satisfaction among the staffs and nurses
and increased level of commitment along with organisational commitment and
improved role clarity.
Hence, from the above analysis it can be stated that a single style of leadership
does not fit to every contexts in the clinical world. Leadership is very complicated. It
requires an approach to the clinical leadership which can maximise or increase the
capacity for productive and positive results for both the nurses and the patients. It
involves several actions and are interpreted subjectively. The health care settings around
the developed nations continuously face challenges with the ever increasing
expectations of customers for the hospital services and increasing costs. All the above
mentioned three models of leadership recognise the vitality of the relationship in the
dyad of leader follower. The aesthetic leadership is a follower centric approach that
provide balanced view of the leader-follower dyad if used for complimenting the
congruent or the transformational leadership as both these models focus on the traits of
leaders.

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References:
Bolsin, S., Carter, J., Kitson, A., Walter, D., & Roberts, S. (2018). Clinical engagement:
a new concept or common sense all round?. Australian Health Review.
Bottomley, P., Mostafa, A. M. S., Gould‐Williams, J. S., & León‐Cázares, F. (2016).
The impact of transformational leadership on organizational citizenship
behaviours: The contingent role of public service motivation. British Journal of
Management, 27(2), 390-405.
Fischer, S. A. (2016). Transformational leadership in nursing: a concept
analysis. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 72(11), 2644-2653.
Ghulam, M. (2016). The emergence and effects of culturally congruent leadership:
Current status and future developments. Entrepreneurial Business and
Economics Review, 4(1), 161-180.
Mannix, J., Wilkes, L., & Daly, J. (2015). Aesthetic leadership: its place in the clinical
nursing world. Issues in mental health nursing, 36(5), 357-361.
McSherry, R., & Pearce, P. (2016). what are the effective ways to translate clinical
leadership into health care quality improvement?. Journal of healthcare
leadership, 8, 11.
Misso, M. L., Ilic, D., Haines, T. P., Hutchinson, A. M., East, C. E., & Teede, H. J.
(2016). Development, implementation and evaluation of a clinical research
engagement and leadership capacity building program in a large Australian
health care service. BMC medical education, 16(1), 13.

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Spurgeon, P., Long, P., Clark, J., & Daly, F. (2015). Do we need medical leadership or
medical engagement?. Leadership in Health Services, 28(3), 173-184.
Stanley, D. (2016). Congruent Leadership. Clinical Leadership in Nursing and
Healthcare: Values into Action, 59.
Storey, J. (2016). Changing theories of leadership and leadership development.
In Leadership in Organizations (pp. 33-58). Routledge.