"What does it Matter that the Leader Believes in the Followers?
"What does it Matter that the Leader Believes in the Followers?
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"What does it Matter that the Leader Believes in the Followers?
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The assignment looks at the effect of how a leader looks at his or her followers and
challenges in leadership in the health care environment. Modern leadership industry is built on
my proposition that the leaders matter more and in a great deal than the followers. This
mistakenly assumes that followers are amorphous, same or all one. Therefore they are hardly
noticed for instance, followers who tag along without minding on the anything are different from
followers that are deeply devoted. According to this perception, followers are low in hierarchy
and therefore have less power, influence and authority than their superiors who in this case are
their leaders (Chaleff, 2009). Generally, followers may go along in order to get along with those
in higher positions as they are their senior and may demand authority from them. At the work
place, the followers may comply with the leaders in order not to put money or stature at risk. In
the community the followers may comply with the leadership in order to maintain and preserve
collective security and stability. This indicates that followers may not necessarily comply with
the leadership to improve work performance or outcomes. The leaders therefore ought to believe
in the followers for better relationship between them and the followers thus improving work
performance. This is a challenge in leadership today in most organisations as leadership has been
overemphasized in expense of the relationship between the leaders and the followers.
According to Thomas Sy, an assistant professor of psychology at UC Riverside, he
proposed that if managers viewed their followers positively for instance, that they were
enthusiastic, industrious and good citizens then they would treat them positively. In case the
manager views the followers negatively for instance, they are incompetent, conforming and
insubordinate he is more likely to treat them negatively too. Managers’ perception of the
employees impacts the organizational outcomes. This includes relationship quality between the
leaders and followers, interpersonal liking, trust in leaders and job satisfaction by the followers
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(Daniels & Daniels, 2007). In order to improve work performance most businesses are now
strategically changing what leaders believe about their followers.
In a five phase study carried out in work place leaders, Sy points out six main
conceptions under which the managers categorises their employees. These conceptions are
industry, good citizenship and enthusiasm. These qualities were used to represent positive
conceptions of the followers. The qualities used to represent negative conceptions were
incompetence, insubordination and conformity. The process of managers to categorise their
followers operated spontaneously and automatically. Managers acted on implicit followership
theories referred to as conceptions for instance those illustrated above. Despite the fact that they
don't realize that they have those beliefs about the employees. Leaders with more positive
conceptions or implicit followership theories behave differently from leaders with negative
conceptions towards their followers. This is mainly because how leaders think has a direct effect
on what they do. Implicit followership theories determine the way the leader treats his followers
and his leadership style. The difference in performance among the followers largely results from
the perception of the leaders towards their followers. This is because evaluation of performance
mostly corresponds to the implicit theories of the perceivers (Gobillot, 2013). Leaders can
recognize their followers' potential more easily. The potential usually fits the leaders' implicit
theories of followership and fail to recognise the potential of their followers who are equally
capable but have less congruence.
This is relevantly seen in a multicultural environment. For instance, most Western leaders
may recognise followers who show to be potentially enthusiastic and thus treat and label these
employees as 'high potentials'. However, they may tend to overlook followers who don't show
enthusiasm which may be caused by their cultural values that inhibit emotional expression. This
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is mostly in Eastern cultures e.g. Japan and China. This example of bias may also occur in case
of gender. The decisions of the personnel mostly depends on the perceptions of the leaders to the
followers thus are mostly systematically biased. Individuals that endorse more followership
theories that are negative are more prone to provide evaluations of the followers that are punitive.
Conversely, individuals with more positive followership theories are more likely to evaluate the
followers positively. The most significant practical implication is that leaders should develop and
be aware of their implicit followership theories profile and how the perceptions bias their
behaviours and cognitions towards the followers. The research also developed a management
tool for assessing leader beliefs about followers. The research confirms what people already
know and now aims at providing practical ways that impact the outcomes of leadership.
The challenges in the health care environment are different and vary from time to time.
The government and regulatory organisations point out practices that enhance patient safety.
However, there is little theoretical research done to inform health care leaders' decisions looking
to create patient safety programmes in their different clinics and hospitals. This is mainly
because it reflects how difficult it is to conduct vigorous study on leadership and organisational
change. Organisational science has described and explained for a long time instead of it being a
field that gives managers advice on how to implement their desired goals and plans in a
prescriptive way. It also indicates bias among organisations that fund the research and
researchers to support the health service research that has been used for long instead of studies
on change and transformation of the organisation. This indicates that we tend to measure things
that we already know how to measure them.
In order to understand challenges that face the health and hospital system executives, the
description of the experience of the Executive Session on Patient safety is necessary. The
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Executive Session is a group of working hospital and health system executives and other
stakeholders. The members agree on working together over a certain period of time in order to
improve and understand patient safety in their communities and organisations e.g. hospitals. It
was created first at Harvard University's J. F. Kennedy School of Government in 1983. The
founders of the Executive Session intended to use the university as a place to meet and convene.
They used it as a setting to learn from other practitioners on leadership and organisational change.
The goal of the Executive Session was to assemble a working team of prominent and thoughtful
people who could come up with ideas about crucial and important social problems, they could
test the concepts that they developed in their various organisations and give the team a report on
their success and failures. The members could disseminate lessons learnt from the team before
their own organisations because of the professional stature and that it was a public problem.
The following were problems and challenges leading in patient safety. One, how should
the executives come up with a structure of their organisations that would deliver safe care?
Secondly, how would the executive measure and monitor their organisations safety performance?
Thirdly, how would the executives spread and maintains a patient safety innovation? Fourthly,
how would the executives manage a relationship with the external environment? Fifth, how
would the executives manage and control their own behaviour in order to lead for safety in their
organisations? (Hunt, 2013). The infrastructure of the organisation that is required for safer care
is being developed by practitioners out in the field as it is a matter of necessity. Further,
strengthening the scientific basis and foundation of the leadership of the organisation in patient
safety is a vital area but is neglected. This is because the organisations depend on scientific
research and findings used in treatment of the patients. These methods are aimed at improving
the patients health and also their safety when undergoing diagnosis of various ailments. Safety of
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the patients is critical as it prevents further spread of the diseases in the patient and also to other
patients. This minimises the cost used in treatment of diseases. The procedures used in treatment
should aim at minimising exposure to the health practitioner too. In order to advance patient care
that is safe, different US hospital associations that are prominent, government agencies, an
employer coalition and accreditation bodies have come up and issued some of the best practice
recommendations for health care organisations. This is in order to enhance safety of the patients.
Health system and hospital leaders usually find themselves in an environment where the
safety programmes' content is determined by the external organisations to some extent. They are
therefore accountable for meeting mandates of the external organisations. However, these
mandates give the executives little guidance on how to build and implement the infrastructure of
the organisation. The infrastructure is necessary to provide support to the patient safety
programme in and within their organisations. The accreditation agencies and the government
usually have a lot to say about what to do but little or no say in terms of ways to achieve these
goals. They are in a better position to offer the executives advice on how to implement and
achieve their goals. This is because they have records and can compare them with other countries
and regions that have also implemented various objectives and goals that have had positive
impact on their health sector especially on patient safety and leadership. Comparisons made help
the executives to learn from the experiences of others. The following are challenges facing the
patient safety leadership. The challenges are pointed out depending on the sections in health care.
In organising care, the following challenges are present. The goals the executives should set in
order to enhance patients’ safety, which management and governance structures are useful?
What responsibilities should be laid out to different professionals and assigned? Whether the
quality and safety entities should remain distinct organisational entities or combined thus
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offering economies of scale. The safety culture that should be established and how the executives
should create one. The implications of the strategy on patient safety for human resources on the
development of a health care work force that has professionals. How can the health care
environment align incentives within an organisation in order to improve safety of the patients?
How can the health care environment engage staff that they usually have little or no direct
control on?
In monitoring and measuring safety, it is difficult for the executives to evaluate the care
the health care environment provides. Another challenge is how the health care environment
should monitor their progress in achieving safety milestones. The metrics that is useful in
monitoring and measuring safety of patients. This poses to be more challenging as it is difficult
to measure and evaluate health care provided. In spreading and maintenance of the changes, it is
difficult to spread improvements from one unit to another in the same hospital or clinic. This is
because priorities differ from time to time thus it is not a guarantee that the innovative
programmes will persist. How leaders maintain, nurture and disseminate successful innovation
especially if faced with competitive priorities poses to be challenging. If leaders should choose
among potentially expensive investment in technology and best practice recommendations. The
barriers of innovation are usually professional cultures of the health care professionals, paucity
of institutional mechanisms and geographic isolation of units and wards (Main Section |
Community Tool Box, n.d.). In public reporting and accountability, it proves challenging for a
leader in what he or she can promise consumers on the next episode of care. What types of
events are the leaders obliged to give a report to the regulators? What should be publicly reported
in order to satisfy the obligation of the executive to the consumers, public good and employees?
This ensures the organisation's credibility and accountability to both the public and the
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employees. It results in increased work performance by the employees and thus more profit for
the organisation.
The following challenges are self management of the health care environment, what
behaviours and arguments make the case? Secondly, how can the executive communicate on the
safety mission in a way that it is taken seriously by the employees, consumers and the general
public? Leadership is very important in an organization and directly impacts on it are performed.
Leaders should keep in mind their followers and believe them positively thus more outcomes.
"What does it Matter that the Leader Believes in the Followers?
References
Chaleff, I. (2009). The courageous follower: Standing up to & for our leaders. San Francisco:
Berrett-Koehler.
Daniels, A. C., & Daniels, J. E. (2007). Measure of a leader: The legendary leadership formula
for producing exceptional performers and outstanding results. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Gobillot, E. (2013). Follow the leader: The one thing great leaders have that great followers
want.
Hunt, J. (2013). Leaders. Chicago, Ill: Heinemann Library.
Main Section | Community Tool Box. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-ofcontents/leadership/leadership-ideas/leadership-challenges/main
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