A Holistic View of Healthcare Leadership

By Sharon Daniels

This is the second of two posts on AchieveGlobal’s study on healthcare leadership, and our report “The Pulse of Leadership in Healthcare: Developing the 21st Century Healthcare Leader.” Be sure to read the complete report.

Now more than ever, healthcare organizations of all sizes need strong leadership. As I mentioned in last week’s blog post, the healthcare industry and its leaders are confronted with significant changes and challenges today, including:

• Rising costs and margin pressures
• A growing number of dissatisfied doctors and patients
• A rapidly-expanding market for services
• Deficiencies in the healthcare workforce

To help combat these and many other challenges that these industry leaders are facing, we set out to get a better understanding of the importance and effectiveness of certain leadership attributes. Generally, we found six “zones”, each of which includes groups of best practices for leadership effectiveness:

Leadership Zone	Best Practices
Reflection	Assess own motives, beliefs, attitudes
Society	Apply fairness, respect
Diversity	Respect and leverage human differences
Ingenuity	Offer and execute practical ideas; create  climate of innovation
People	Connect with others
Business	Develop strategies, make and execute plans

 

In the healthcare sector, our study revealed that while a leader’s ability to connect with others was considered extremely important, most healthcare leaders were ineffective at actually doing it.

We also found that effective leaders in healthcare possess five specific traits:

1. They recognize their own strengths and liabilities
2. They adjust their approaches
3. They adopt new strategies
4. They maximize the strengths of others
5. And, they minimize the liabilities of others

This may seem like a very tall order. But with all the critical factors facing the healthcare industry, now is a good time for leaders in this sector to give themselves their own “check-up,” making sure that they have what it takes to help their organizations navigate this time of significant change.

 

Sharon Daniels is CEO of AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida