Bush, Bell and Middlewood (2019) observed that leadership is one of the most significant aspects of leading the staffs towards proper direction and thus generates positive behavior among them. Leading the staffs towards proper direction is one of the major aspects of improving organizational productivity. As discussed by Stegen et al. (2018, p. 49) in the context of healthcare organization, effective leadership is an important factor in providing high quality of service to the patients. Present paper would put forth the discussion of the leadership in the context of healthcare. Critical analysis of the case will be carried out by evaluating the issue. Possible solutions will also be provided to Colleen in order to mitigate the issue she is facing.
Problem statement and common objectives:
Conflict is one of the most significant factors in an organization. As per the case study, Medical One is one of the largest multispecialty health care service providers in United Sates. The company is operating multiple hospitals in different states and holding more than 13,000 employees and 900 physicians around the states. However, lack of appropriate planning is posing a major threat for Medical One to maintain their financial stability. Due to huge cost overruns, a comparatively smaller health and social care provider, namely Healthcare Plus, has acquired Medical One with the intension of restructuring its financial situation. This is absolutely the case of mergers and acquisitions in which both of the companies have decided to use their respective strengths in order to attain immense success from business. There are certain common objectives in between Colleen and other healthcare practitioners. These could be summarized as follows:
To improve the overall clinical and administrative operation
To solidify the market strength
To leverage the operational infrastructure
To use proven system in order to lower the execution risk
However, Colleen was dissatisfied and uncomfortable with the approach taken by the senior management in order to carry out the merger and acquisition, since she didn’t feel fully qualified for the high position granted to her of being a manager in a highly stressful situation. The difficulty of the condition for her started when she had consistently put dependable effort in order to generate positive attitude among the staffs and make them feel equal. However, in-spite of the effort, she has faced major issues in the way of generating positive emotions and feelings among the staffs. Also, with the passage of time, Colleen has faced major issues in the way of keeping the staffs positive by encouraging them not to show agitating attitude, since it would pose major threats to achieve a successful merger between the two entities.
Critical Analysis of the situation:
Weiss, Tappen and Grimley (2019) stressed on the fact that intense competition and economic uncertainty are playing a critical role in leading the organizations to go for merger and acquisition with other companies, operating in the same industry. From the case study, it has been observed that financial difficulty has led Medical One to merge with Healthcare Plus with the determination of using its robust plan. In-fact, the fundamental aim of both companies is to access their respective strengths to attain long term success from business. However, their success is being hindered by the reluctant mindset adopted by the team. Consequently, lack of favorable behavior is adversely affecting the overall improvement of organizational productivity. According to the Organizational Behavior Model, there are three different levels in an organization; including individual level, group level and organizational system level. Individual level is considered as the most complicated level as employees differ from each other on the basis of psychology. From the discussion of Hallinger and Hammad (2019, p .380) it can be said that, it is the prime responsibility of the business leader to assess the characters and behavior of the staffs which is the key of generating positive behavior among them by taking proactive action and structuring a preferable environment. Therefore, Collen can adopt this strategy to form an attractive environment for displaying cooperation, understanding and teamwork based on her evaluation for their mental state, personalities and behaviors.
Northouse (2018) opined that group level is another major level in an organization which comprises of all the individual employees in a group who are independent and work for common objectives. The structure of an organization plays a major role in improving the team performance by aligning the team members in a single platform. Thus, being a manager, it is the prime responsibility of Colleen to improve the organizational culture, which is the key of improving the attitude of the employees, by developing a Cultural Integration Plan. Podsakoff & Podsakoff (2019) shaded light on the fact that this plan is necessarily needed in terms of cohesively bringing all the staffs together into one commonly accepted culture. However, examining the cultural differences of employees is also a vital way of improving the organizational culture to suit everyone’s needs and directions. System level is another vital level in an organization. This is the level of developing all the initial rules and procedures as a final step. Lane &Maznevski (2019) proved that strong action in order to improve the attitude of the staffs needs to be taken at the initial stage of individual level. Colleen should also give proper information to the staffs regarding the merger between Medical One and Healthcare Plus and its main goal and future directions so that they can feel involved in the process of decision making and leadership.
Solutions:
In the extreme volatile business environment, leadership is an important factor as it supports in maximizing the efficiency among the staffs by leading them towards proper direction. Barr & Dowding (2019) observed that in the context of healthcare organization, effective leadership plays a major role in leading the staffs towards proper direction by guiding and instructing them to maximize their performance level.. As opined by Figueroa et al. (2019, p. 240) due to uncertainty and competition, the business leaders might face challenging situationstation.
However, Currie & Spyridonidis (2019, p. 1210) commented that it is important for leaders to take the challenging situation positively because that’s where it lays the significance of situational leadership, which urges leaders to adapt leadership style that most fit and considered to be appropriate for the situation. That is, leaders are encouraged to implement strategies and leadership style in accordance with the situation and the condition, taking into account the general goals, environment, employees personalities and even external business environment conditions. This theory shows that most competent leaders can be considered as those who adjust their leadership characteristics in different situations and nature of a group working with. From the case study, it is worthy to mention that Colleen is facing significant issues in the way of leading the staffs towards proper direction and work efficiently in order to meet the diverse need of the customers. However, this behavior can be interpreted by Colleen as being stimulated caused from working in a new environment, the outcome of merger in between Medical One and Healthcare Plus, hence it is normal to show a disinclined attitude and resist the rapid change that they are undergoing. Hence, as per the situational leadership theory, it would be emotionally intelligent by Collen to exercise sympathy towards their feelings and embrace those negative emotions instead of curbing them.
Moreover, The degree of competition in the market is acting as the driving force behind the firms to restructure their team to improve the organizational efficiency. In the context of healthcare organization, the team plays a major role in satisfying the requirements of diverse range of patients by joining all human talents in one collaborative team where by doing so, effective use of resources (human capital) can be made in an efficient manner. However, desirable results and sustainable emotions can only be maintained among the team if Colleen adopts as well a leadership style known as Transformational Leadership. This leadership theory states that it is predominantly the role of a leader to build a solid relationship with the followers and construct a common vision in order to create a mutual directional mindset towards one end in the team. Hence, by adopting this leadership style, a clearer path will be set for Colleen’s team with a common objective supported by each member of the team. Thereby, clarity and motivation will occur more naturally since they are embedded in the vision created for a team, which means it can inspire positive attitude and emotions among them without having to curb or force any type of attitude pretension.
Conclusion:
Based on the discussion, it can be concluded by saying that appropriate leadership is the key of enabling Colleen to assist other managers to deal with the fast-changing structure of the workplace environment. Thus, a combination of situational leadership and transformational leadership styles have the ability and prospects to assist her in dealing with her current impediment that require an adept skill in leading others in highly stressful and sensitive conditions. Besides that, communicational and interpersonal skills are inevitably required as a leader if she is aspiring to amend her team’s behavior by having an impact on them and inspiring them to work towards one solid vision that have a promising prospect of lifting the organization to a noticeable level.
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