Public Health Leadership: Interviews, Analysis, and Self-Assessment

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of public health leadership and management. It begins by comparing the roles and responsibilities of leaders and managers, highlighting the differences in approach and focus within healthcare settings compared to other organizations. The report then presents interviews with two leaders in the Australian public health industry, Mr. John Stanway and Mr. Gareth Goodier, discussing their roles, responsibilities, and visions for their respective organizations. A critical discussion of the interviews explores various leadership theories, such as transformational and collaborative leadership, and assesses their application in healthcare. Finally, a self-assessment of leadership styles is conducted using Northouse's leadership traits questionnaire, and the findings are analyzed against Rowitz’s Public Health Leadership Principles, identifying strengths and areas for improvement in the context of public health leadership and management.

Running head: PUBLIC HEALTH
LEADERSHIP AND EFFECTING CHANGE IN PUBLIC HEALTH
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

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Introduction
Effective leadership and management skills are important in providing the community
with a sustainable, equitable and in efficient manner. Further for the attainment of all these
purposes, all the important resources for service provision such as the human resources, financial
resources, machinery and other process aspects should work together (Yukl, 2012). For any
organization, it is important for the leadership to develop new ideas and the management to
implement those within the system so that better service can be provided to the community
(Yeung et al., 2012). In this assignment through different modules the comparison between the
leadership and management and will discuss how the role of leader and manager is different for
healthcare industry than any other organization. Further, interviews of two public health industry
leaders will be described. Finally an assessment of the interviews will be presented and the
strengths of the analysis and areas where improvements are required will be figured out.
Part 1: Leaders versus Managers
Comparing the roles and responsibilities
According to Wong & Laschinger (2012), leadership is the personal trait or skill and the
person who possesses the skill is known as the Leader, whereas management is an attitude or
discipline and people who practice this discipline is known as the Manager. While comparing
these two job roles and responsibilities, the first aspect that should be compared is leadership is
associated with creating vision for the organization, whereas the managers create goals for the
employees to complete the vision. Further, while taking responsibilities of the organization,
leaders believe in taking risks for the broad benefit of the organization, on the other hand,
managers work for control the risk (Avey, Wernsing & Palanski, 2012). The third roles and

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responsibility of a leader is to make relationship with other leaders, associated stakeholders of
the organization, and focuses on loyalty and trustworthiness for the development of
organizational relationships. Whereas, the managers focuses on the creating processes so that
process related problems and risk can be avoided while achieving vision set by the leaders (Zhu
et al., 2012). Finally, leaders coach employees as they are optimistic about the people who work
for the organization and believe in their potential archive success for the organization, whereas,
managers knows the ability of each employee and assigns them tasks depending on their ability
to perform and provides guidance to achieve the personal target of each employee. Therefore,
depending on these comparison between leaders and managers depending on their roles and
responsibilities, it could be determined that the difference is basically in the approach of both
these professionals associated to one organization (Avey, Wernsing & Palanski, 2012).
How leaders and managers of healthcare facility differs from other organizations?
Healthcare facilities are always difficult to lead and manage as different departments,
multidisciplinary staffs, multidirectional goals, diverse diseases management processes makes it
a complex workplace and organization to lead or manage (Toussaint & Berry, 2013). The first
difference between healthcare management and leadership skills in healthcare system is focus on
transformational theory of leadership than transactional theory of leadership. This leadership
skill enables the leaders to provide rationale to their vision so that the multidisciplinary
professionals can be empowered to achieve the goals. Whereas, in the other organizations, most
of the managers and leaders utilizes the theory of transaction, focusing on the supervision
organization and group performance (Ozcan, 2014). Further, leaders or managers of other
organizations focuses on including machinery in the organization so that automation can be
implemented to reduce man-made errors. However, with healthcare facility, it is not possible to

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include machineries, as complete automation of the healthcare processes is not possible. Further
managing the healthcare professionals is also difficult as each patient and their associated disease
varies from another (Toussaint & Berry, 2013). Therefore, for the management of such
professionals managers need to follow multiple-goal strategies. Hence, in healthcare services,
managers need to manage variety of services the organization deliver with complete perfection,
as here the loss is associated to the life of patients. Further, in this system, the manager is
answerable to people such as patients, their families, partner organizations and suppliers of drugs
and other medicinal equipment (Ozcan, 2014).
Part 2: Leaders in public health industry
Explaining the roles and responsibilities of two leaders who were interviewed
Interview is a process that helps to understand the mindset of the person and serves as the
case study going through which can help the assessor to understand the thought process of public
health leaders while implementing visions and missions. In this assessment, Rowitz’s interview
guide, having 15 questions were used for the conduction of interview of two leaders of public
healthcare facilities of Australia (Rowitz, 2013). The two leaders selected for the interview were
CEO of royal children hospital Melbourne, Mr. John Stanway and the CEO of the Melbourne
Biomedical precinct, Mr. Gareth Goodier. Both these leaders were asked the 15 questions in the
Rowtiz’s interview guide. The roles and responsibilities of these leaders towards their workplace
is to provide it with visions and missions so that each employee’s potential can be utilized to
attain improvement. The areas Mr. Gareth cares about in associated organization are the
environment, human rights of the employees and patients, art and culture and quality healthcare.
Whereas, Mr. Stanway is an economic and industrial relations graduate and had experience of

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working in many healthcare facilities prior to royal children hospital Melbourne (Pless, Maak &
Waldman, 2012).
Response summary
At first the interview was conducted with Mr. John Stanway and his response to
associated questions was influencing and progressive. The reason of Mr. Stanway for joining
healthcare industry was to improve the state of healthcare industry within Australia. According
to him, knowledge of economic skills is the primary aspect of his leadership skills that allows
him to take risky steps such as including young generation’s reviews and feedbacks in the
growth and development of processes within the system. The important responses form the
interview that should be mentioned are the thought of Mr. Stanway regarding monitoring of new
healthcare leaders using leadership development monitoring skills so that the lacks in the
leadership skills of the new generation leaders can be fulfilled. Further, in the response of a
question that needed description regarding community care in the healthcare setting, Mr.
Stanway replied that due to successful implementation of cultural safety norms of nursing
council, their healthcare facility is free from communal and racial discriminations.
On the other hand, while conducting interview with Mr. Gareth Goodier, it was
understood that his approach towards healthcare sector did not focused on generation of
revenues, but completely focused on equality and quality of healthcare in each of the individuals
within the society. The reason for his joining healthcare industry was his medical background
due to which he was able to serve more than 25 years and to different major healthcare system
across Australia. In response to the question that asks the possibility of public-private
relationship for attainment of quality healthcare, he mentioned his vision of conjugating public

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and healthcare systems of countries such as USA, China, UK with that of Australia so that the
Melbourne Biomedical precinct can be spread in those countries.
Critical discussion of their interview
There are several leadership theories, application of which in the healthcare industry can
lead to attain healthcare professional satisfaction as well as quality improvement of the process.
These theories are transformational leadership, conflict management, collaborative leadership,
shared and distributed leadership, ethical and finally functional result related healthcare
leadership theory (Lian & Tui, 2012). These leadership theories are the base of modern
healthcare system and guidance using these leadership skills are improving the value, culture,
capabilities and organizational context of the healthcare facilities. The leadership skill of Mr.
Gareth Goodier was collaborative leadership where, all the employees were working together to
achieve a mutual goal. However, according to Paulus, Dzindolet & Kohn (2012), collaborative
leadership technique is quite risky as it may raise the level of conflict and differences within the
employees. This creates unrest within the healthcare system, which can have negative effect on
the health of patients. Secondly, the thought of Mr. Gareth Goodier of combining public and
private healthcare facilities to further expand his healthcare facility explains that despite of being
a leader of healthcare facility, his prime aim is to gain revenue from the organization (Lian &
Tui, 2012). Further the interview of Mr. Stanley determined that his leadership skill had perfect
balance of transformational as well as transactional skills as by including young talented
healthcare professionals in the system, it implemented change in a better way as well as due to
new and fresher work force, and the burden of financial demand was decreased (Anderson,
Potočnik & Zhou, 2014).

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Part 3: Self-Assessment of Leadership Style
Leadership Skills Inventory in Northouse.
As per the leadership traits questionnaire described in Northouse (2015), an assessment
of these two leader’s leadership skill was done so that the effect of their visions on their
followers can be assessed. Both of the leaders were provided with the self-assessment form,
where they had to rate themselves on a scale of 10. Response of both the leaders were somewhat
similar, however, in the point d dependency, Mr. Gareth Goodier rated himself 8 points or
denoted himself as dependable, whereas Mr. Stanley rated himself 5 and replier with nurture
answers. Further both the leaders rated themselves higher as per the human oriented skills,
technical skills and process and relation oriented skills (Siewiorek et al., 2012).
Analysis against Rowitz’s Public Health Leadership Principles
While further analyzing the leadership theories of two leaders using Rowitz’s Public
Health Leadership Principles the statements of healthcare facility leaders was tallied with the 14
principles of it. Both the leaders focused on the public health infrastructure and focused on
strengthening the system so that each of the function can be carried out properly, hence complied
with principle 1, 4 and 6 (Northouse, 2015). Further, the leaders were open to lifetime learnings
and were high on self-esteem for personal as well as organizational growth, hence complies with
the principle 2, 8 and 11. The leaders involved employees, patients, their families and younger
generation involved in healthcare sector to provide feedback about the process and utilizes
techniques such as rewards and recognition, risk taking approaches for development and
responsibly use the resources for further development (Rowitz, 2013). Hence, as per the

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Rowitz’s Public Health Leadership Principles, the leaders of both the organizations were able to
comply with several principles of this theory (Poksinska, Swartling & Drotz, 2013).
Identifying strengths depending on the analysis and the scope of improvement
After the complete analysis of the leadership skills, and self-assessment I was able to find
out my strengths as a leader and manager of healthcare institute. I rated myself on the self-
assessment tool and according to the results, as a leader I was able to take risky and bigger steps
for overall development of the healthcare setting (Siewiorek et al., 2012). Further, I rated myself
5 points on the scale of 10 in case of dependency that determines my honesty and open to
criticism nature. Further, there is a scope of improvement in case of dependency as it is one of
the most crucial step of leadership and management (Poksinska, Swartling & Drotz, 2013).
Conclusion
Leadership and management are both important aspects for the sustainable growth and
overall development of the company and its process. There are different theories for leadership
in healthcare industry and depending on which, this assignment compared the roles and
responsibilities of leader and manager of healthcare industries with other organizations. Further,
the assignment demonstrated interviews of two leaders of healthcare industry and summarized
their replies depending on the questionnaire based on the Rowitz’s interview guide and
conducted self-assessment to determine the compliance of the leadership skills with that of
Rowitz’s self-assessment principles.

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