Analysis of Supervisory Styles and Leadership in Healthcare (MSLP-655)

This report delves into the critical role of supervisory styles in speech-language pathology and healthcare settings, emphasizing their impact on graduate student education and clinical practice. It explores three key supervisory styles: authoritarian, laissez-faire, and democratic, analyzing their characteristics, advantages, and disadvantages. The report highlights the importance of aligning supervisory styles with leadership approaches and personality traits, particularly within the context of speech-language therapy. It discusses the influence of these styles on teaching, motivation, and the development of interpersonal skills. The author provides a personal opinion, favoring the democratic leadership style, and emphasizes the significance of team support and individual perspectives in decision-making. The report concludes by stressing the need for adaptability in supervisory approaches to effectively address the challenges of healthcare environments. References to relevant literature, including ASHA documents, are included to support the research.

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LITERATURE ON SUPERVISORY
STYLES
Literature on Supervisory Styles
Name of Student
Name of the University
Author note:

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LITERATURE ON SUPERVISORY STYLES
Introduction
Clinical supervision and clinical consulting can be considered as the most important
and the most critical aspect of the health care and allied health care delivery processes. It help
the health practitioners to provide and contribute to a patient-centered care and clinical
decision-making process in an organizational framework as well as in a patient care and
student education scenario (Parés, Ospina & Subirats, 2017). Clinical supervision is a very
crucial aspect of overseeing the duties of the junior staffs and in an academic framework – it
is highly important that supervisors should follow a critical supervisory style. This is because
it support in teaching, educating, motivating and critical thinking, mentoring, advising,
conducting the evaluations of the performances, act as a role model to modify, and built the
professional behavior in the students, studying in the medical and allied medical academic
framework (Caillier, 2020). It is vital that the supervisory style must be linked to the
leadership styles and this finds a vast application in the educational setting of speech-
language pathology (Tight, 2019). Personality traits, behavioral types and the perception plus
decision-making skills of the leader marks the choice of specific leadership style the
individual is about to follow and in the field of speech-language therapy. The choice and the
very selection of the supervision style play a huge role in the development of a correct or
inefficient supervisory style in a graduate-level education framework and the same applied in
the field of speech-language therapy as well (Fiaz, Su & Saqib, 2017). It is to be noted that in
the supervisory style can be of three cardinal types and based on the traits of the individual’s
and the cognitive aspects of the educator. It is the right supervisory style has to be put to
practice in order to teach, motivate, educate, clarify the concepts, and teach the intrapersonal
and the interpersonal skills to the graduate students in the field of speech-language pathology.
The supervisory styles are of three cardinal types – authoritarian style, laissez-faire style and
democratic style (Peker, Inandi & Giliç, 2018).

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The professional relationship between the supervisees and the supervisors play a
critical role in the development of pace in which a subject is taught in a classroom setting and
the attitudes, as well as the perceptions of both the supervisor and the graduate students
(supervisees). It play a huge role in the feelings about the teaching and the learning
experiences (Kars & Inandi, 2018). The leadership styles, whether it is authoritarian style or
laissez-faire or democratic affect this interchange and state of supervision-supervisor
interaction in an education setting to a great effect (Hunt & Fitzgerald, 2018). The feelings of
compassion, understanding, fellowship, care, mutual goodwill and mutual respect are the
very fundamentals that shape a teaching and learning experience in a graduate education
framework. It involve supervisory or leadership styles that incorporate the same have more
positive impact and influence in the teaching and managing of medical and allied medical
students in a graduation level education framework. Empathy, compensatory effort when the
student is not being able to learn in the regular way and flexibility in altering the teaching
styles are the major traits involved in operation of a successful supervision process (El
Khouly, AbdelDayem & Saleh, 2017).
In authoritarian style, it is just the leader, or in this case, the supervisor who is in
control or instead takes up the control of the teaching process. An authoritarian leader or
supervisor takes up absolute control over the operations and the organizational setting. In this
style, the leader makes all the decisions and is the sole person involved in maintenance and
regulation of discipline and order in the team or team members, he or she is supervising (Yao
et al., 2017). Authoritarian or Autocratic leadership style is a very dictating one and is of
directive style, where the leader has complete control over the group and the decisions being
taken towards the achievement of the targets. As the leadership style is straightforward and
directive, the viewpoints of the other staffs in the team are not taken into consideration in
most circumstances and hence there is very less space for any kind of creativity. The group

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members are not encouraged to provide any input related to the betterment of the processes or
for strategic improvement. The positives of leadership control are quick decision making as
there is less need or in most cases, no need for a consensus in decision-making. If a leader is
the most knowledgeable and experienced about the group dynamics – both appropriate and
quick decisions are made in emergency situations thus improving the productivity at a rapid
rate and moderating the severe circumstances all at once. An autocratic leader works with
focused targets and maintains close supervision of all its members – that is critical and
important under acute situations as well. The adversities are disruptions, lack of compliance
with the leader’s decision as the authority is centralized.
Laissez-faire style provides a degree of freedom for the team members and the staffs
to participate in the decision-making process pertaining to a process or the change in the
organization as a whole as well. The group members can take decisions and the followers
have the opportunity to bring about a change or a transformation in the organization. There is
more flexibility in this Laissez faire style than the authoritarian style of leadership and there
is more follower participation possible in the framework of this leadership. The chances of
disruption are less but might take more time in decision making (Caillier, 2020)
Democratic style of leadership is also known as the participative type of leadership
and this type of leadership is most favored in the modern era in the organizations as this is a
very integral aspect of the transformational type of leadership bringing about an organization
change. There is the most flexibility in decision-making and all the followers almost are
involved in the decision making of this process. Everyone in the group feels their worth and
importance in the team and the feelings of interrelatedness, compassion, fellow feeling and
connectedness develops the collective spirit of the group. Although the leader decides against
taking inputs from all the followers and there might be more time-consuming in the joint
decision-making by the group as more members are involved – democratic style of leadership

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is still preferred in most of the organizations and settings as it promotes the ideas of equity
and dignity in the organizational culture (Hunt & Fitzgerald, 2018).
Conclusion
Hence, it can be concluded that traits such as perseverance, flexibility, success
certainty, compensatory effort, self-discipline and self-control are essential factors, which
lead to performance of the leader in effective management of a group. In the context of this
study, the same traits must be present in a teacher in order to teach, guide and motivate
students in the training and teaching framework of speech-language pathology field.
Opinion
I am an extrovert and based on my personality described as outgoing, talkative,
interpersonal and compassionate feel that the democratic leadership style is most aligned with
my thoughts and behaviors. I believe it is very important to use the team support to full effect
to bring about a change and it is very important to know and understand each and every team
member’s perspective about the ideas and the solutions to the problems and about the
problems before a decision is taken. Democratic style of leadership focusses on empowering
the ideas of the staffs, which is important in the organizational culture and ethical context. I
think an autocratic leadership, in my opinion, can be useful in making quick decisions in
times of crisis but on the overall – it can be disruptive. In the case of crisis or emergency, this
type of leadership will help in taking authority of the scenario and directing the team
members to work according to a plan of action is necessary. This will help in moving in a
particular direction as well as making a collaborative effort that will help the team to
undertake the emergency with optimal efficacy. In this case, if all the members of the team
are asked for opinions and idea, it will lead to time consumption and reducing the practical
approach that may be implemented to address the situation. Therefore, autocratic leadership

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is one of the most applicable forms of cardinal style that can be applied in my workplace for
effectively addressing the issue.
As for Laissez-faire leadership style, I think this has the best of both previously
mentioned leaderships and in the end – the balance ratio present in this leadership can lead to
success, in the long run. Since the team members are aware of their regular duties and
responsibilities, thus, allowing them to take their own course of action is more feasible in
nature. This involves maintaining a balance in the workplace by allowing a certain degree of
freedom to the members that will help them in understanding their values within the
organizational context thus, improving the performance level of the healthcare professionals
as well as organization. Interference from the management may sometimes affect the quality
of care offered by healthcare professionals.
Therefore, it can be stated that each scenario is different in nature and since the
healthcare setting is the most challenging environment involving clinical complications and
severities, thus, it is important to address the issues in a critical manner. The use of different
leadership style needs to be adopted by practitioners as per the situation in order to improve
the care process in the healthcare setting.

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References
Caillier, J. G. (2020). Testing the Influence of Autocratic Leadership, Democratic
Leadership, and Public Service Motivation on Citizen Ratings of An Agency Head’s
Performance. Public Performance & Management Review, 1-24.
El Khouly, S., AbdelDayem, M., & Saleh, I. (2017). The impact of leadership styles on
strategy implementation in the Egyptian Pharmaceutical Field. In Competition
Forum (Vol. 15, No. 1, pp. 240-246). American Society for Competitiveness.
Fiaz, M., Su, Q., & Saqib, A. (2017). Leadership styles and employees' motivation:
Perspective from an emerging economy. The Journal of Developing Areas, 51(4),
143-156.
Hunt, J., & Fitzgerald, M. (2018). Styles of Leadership. Leadership: Regional and Global
Perspectives, 62.
Kars, M., & Inandi, Y. (2018). Relationship between School Principals' Leadership Behaviors
and Teachers' Organizational Trust. Eurasian Journal of Educational Research, 74,
145-164.
Parés, M., Ospina, S. M., & Subirats, J. (Eds.). (2017). Social innovation and democratic
leadership: communities and social change from below. Edward Elgar Publishing.
Peker, S., Inandi, Y., & Giliç, F. (2018). The Relationship between Leadership Styles
(Autocratic and Democratic) of School Administrators and the Mobbing Teachers
Suffer. European Journal of Contemporary Education, 7(1), 150-164.
Tight, M. (2019). Mass intellectuality and democratic leadership in higher education.

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Yao, L., Woan, K. S., Li, F., Ahmad, M. H. B., & Kuantan, G. (2017). The relationship
between leadership styles and employee engagement: evidences from construction
companies in Malaysia. Medwell Journal, The Social Sciences, 12(6), 984-988.