This article by the American College of Health Care Administrators, whose purpose is to promote excellence in leadership amongst Long Term Care Administrators.
This paper provides an in-depth review of Effective Leadership in Long Term Care facilities and the need and opportunity for Leadership.
Key Points:
Leadership/Management
- In Leadership in Organizations, Yukl (2006) defines leadership as “the process of influencing others to understand and agree about what needs to be done and how to do it, and the process of facilitating individual and collective efforts to accomplish shared objectives” (p. 8). This definition is useful because it provides for both direct and indirect influences on the preparation for future challenges as well as the current work of the group or organization.
- His definition recognizes that effective leaders achieve results by inspiring followers and by training and coaching them to develop their skills.
- Much of the literature on leadership over the past decade tries to distinguish between a leader and a manager. Some suggest that these roles are qualitatively different and mutually exclusive.
- Gallup organization found that “the most important difference between a great manager and a great leader is one of focus” (Buckingham and Coffman 1999, p. 63). Effective managers look inside the company to see how to develop the talents and strengths of its people based on their individual differences in style, goals, needs, and motivation. Leaders look outward at the competition, at the future, and at strategies.
- Describing leadership broadly encourages a focus on the common characteristics and processes that make leaders and managers effective rather than different. The key to optimizing success is to develop the strengths of each member of the management team in a way that contributes to the synergy of the whole team in implementing and sustaining a higher performing organization.
Evaluating Leadership Effectiveness
- All organizations and groups have leaders, but not all leaders are effective. Two commonly used factors for evaluating effectiveness are follower support and goal achievement.
- The majority of leadership research has focused on differentiating the components of leadership to evaluate effectiveness. These are generally broken down into traits and behaviors (Jago 1982 and Clark 1990).
- Studies have also examined how motives affect leadership effectiveness. McClelland and his associates (1985) found that the motives fall into three categories: (1) affiliation (obtains satisfaction from being accepted and liked), (2) achievement (obtains satisfaction from successfully accomplishing a difficult task or being the first to do something), (3) power (obtains satisfaction from influencing the attitudes and behaviors of others).
- Evaluating Tools:
- Multi-Factor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) developed by Bass and Avolio (1997)
- Kouzes and Posner (2002) conducted extensive interviews to identify their Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI) assesses: (1) challenging the process, (2) inspiring a shared vision, (3) enabling others to act, (4) modeling the way, and (5) encouraging the heart.
Developing Effective Leadership Behaviors
- Leadership behaviors are primarily learned and are often categorized as task-oriented, relations-oriented, and participative (Yukl 2006).
- Task-orientation of effective managers is focused on planning, coordinating, and providing resources rather than doing the same kind of work as their subordinates.
- Relations-oriented behaviors that are supportive and considerate.
Participative leadership. Rather than just individual supervision, they use more group activities to facilitate and encourage subordinates to work together and participate in decision-making (Yukl 2006, p. 54