Leadership Theory In Health Care

As healthcare professional leaders, it is important in understanding the key aspects of leadership roles and how theory contributes to the components of effective leadership styles. However, most theories were not developed for the use of healthcare, but instead used for the business aspect and then applied to the administration side of healthcare (Al-Sawai, 2013). Many leadership theories continuously change over time, and have evolved from those in the early period such as the Great Man Theory to various others. The health care industry is one of great complexity and constraints that limit the use of just a single theory or leadership style. Many of the leadership approaches can be used in a healthcare setting in order “to optimize management

Coupled together these components of the situational theory intention is to measure the effectiveness of task and relationship-oriented leadership depending on the maturity of a leader’s followers. The theory uses the measurements to classify leaders into two classes of either task oriented or relationship-oriented behaviors. The two classes are distinct leadership behaviors, but if considered together, they will help define four main leadership styles. Hersey and Blanchard considered there to be four leadership style behaviors: telling, selling, participating, and

Some of the benefits of the Hersey and Blanchard situational leadership theory are, 1) it’s easy to apply because it’s simple, 2) the theory give simple measures for leaders to use in assessing what leadership style they should use, 3) the maturity and competence have factors that are overlooked and it helps focus on these (Leadership-Central, 2010). Despite the benefits, there are three non-beneficial factors of the theory. The cons of this theory are 1) the theory may not be applicable to mangers as administrators or those with limited power, 2) there may be situations where the theory is less applicable, and lastly, the testing of the theory doesn’t seem to bear out the predictions (Leadership-Central, 2010). However, by using the situational leadership theory, leaders can become flexible in leadership to support a variety of individuals with various capabilities and