Leadership for
Healthcare
Ms. Rabbia Javed
LEADERSHIP
WHAT IS LEADERSHIP?
DEFINITION
Leadership in Healthcare
Industry
Leadership for Healthcare offers a comprehensive summary of generic concepts and ideas
about leadership and attempts to organize and structure the content based on the ‘Warwick 6
C Framework for thinking about leadership’ which was co-developed by the authors.
Warwick 6 C Framework has built on the idea that too many earlier reviews of leadership
approaches centered on separate individualistic models. Instead, it examines the evidence for a
comprehensive leadership approach in the wider arena that healthcare leaders have to operate in.
This idea is not new, but the authors do provide an easy to use, robust and accessible review of
the evidence.
The ‘6-C Framework’ views leadership from six different angles: concepts, characteristics,
contexts, challenges, capabilities and consequences and emphasizes that these elements are inter-
connected and inter-active.
The ‘6-C Framework’
Concepts
Characteristics
Contexts
Challenges
Capabilities
Consequences
Concepts
Conceptual approaches to leadership are personal qualities of the leader,
organizational positions of a leader and leadership as a social process.
There are several studies to clarify the conceptualization of leadership
being used in any given setting as an important pre-requisite for effective
leadership development.
If the concept of leadership is understood in the social processes of
influence and mobilization, then the attention will need to be paid to how
the leader understands, interacts with and engages with the group being
led.
Leadership through influence requires the cultivation of interpersonal
skills and emotional intelligence, amongst other aspects.
Characteristics
Characteristics of leadership are categorized into
formal and informal leadership,
direct and indirect leadership,
clinical and non-clinical leadership,
individual and shared/distributed leadership,
different bases of power.
You may have noticed that the leadership characteristics may vary according to the role.
Leadership development activities need to be geared to the roles and resources of those in leadership positions.
The conceptual distinction between leader development and leadership development is a useful one, both types of development are
important, according to the context and the needs of the organization.
We agree that overall, leadership development requires careful thinking about who is to be developed, and what their potential roles
and contributions are within and for the organization.
Different types of leaders are different sources and processes of influence, and it is necessary for leadership development to be
designed appropriately
Context
Context of leadership shows the importance of partnership and inter-professional and
inter-organisational networks as critical skills for healthcare leaders, particularly but
not exclusively at senior levels.
It highlights the unique importance of partnership as a crucial context to the leadership
in healthcare, the need to focus on whole-system design and development, to ensure
that partnership contributes to strategic purpose.
Challenges
Challenges of leadership show three key challenges:
sense-making and constitutional challenge leading networked and partnership
organisations,
challenge of turn-around and leading organisations out of failure and
the challenge of leading change, innovation and improvement.
These are particularly relevant to leaders who work with and within networks
of providers to foster better integrated care for patients.
While this aspect is perhaps the most crucial and relevant to a leader working
within an integrated delivery system, the topic is not sufficiently detailed in
terms of content for useful and practical lessons to be learnt here.
Consequences
Consequences of leadership describes how leadership has an impact on people and
systems, talks about causes and effects, inputs, activities and outputs, customer
satisfaction and eventually outcomes in a so-called public value stream..
There is emphasize that clear thinking about leadership development is essential.
Warwick framework provides a simple analytical framework to ask critical questions to
ensure alignment between strategic purposes and leadership development practices
The Warwick offers a comprehensive framework to structure the more or less recent and
important thoughts, write-ups and research results on leadership.
Capabilities
Capabilities of leadership subsume traits, behaviours (competencies, emotional
intelligence, leadership with political awareness, overarching competencies),
capability of leading networks and teams, transformational and transactional
leadership behaviours and styles and post-transformational leadership.
These concepts are not new and are perhaps the most widely written on in the
popular management literature and academic journals.
Hence, this book is suitable for someone who is perhaps more interested in research in theoretical and very abstract
disquisitions. It is not recommended for the practising leader in the healthcare sector who wants to understand his
knowledge, skill and performance gaps and who strives to enhance his own capabilities. The practical value of this
book for a leader working in healthcare is hence quite limited. Only the final chapter of the book can be suggested as
reading material for those who are in charge of structuring leadership development programs for healthcare sector—
if they have some time to spare. In this case, you would find recommendations such as:
Planning for leadership development needs to cover: how people are selected; the curriculum design; the pedagogical
principles; the actual activities; the organisational framework; and how leadership development is evaluated.
Clarify the concept of leadership—otherwise the appropriate may be inappropriate for the needs of the organisation.
How clear is the organisation about its views of what constitutes effective leadership and what constitutes effective
management.
Cross-sector leadership development may be particularly important to help develop skills in emotional intelligence
and leadership with political awareness.
Designing in evaluation at an early stage will help ensure that leadership development is focused and that it can be
modified over time using systematic feedback.
In general, the authors list a multitude of different facets of leadership and evidence
that support this or that model, hypothesis or statement without adding much of their
own opinion. At the end the reader has the impression that everything has been
considered but not too much has really been suggested, recommended or concluded
