Introduction
Leaders can establish a culture of change in their organization, and multiple approaches can be implemented to maintain it. Strategies to enhance effectiveness might also lead to adjusting personal characteristics and selecting ethical theories to address. Furthermore, providing the employees with a convenient and diverse working environment and encouraging them to improve their practices is essential (Cummings et al., 2020). Consequently, successful organizational culture changes require creating and following a leadership development plan. A workable tactic must tackle necessary traits, barriers, theories, schemes to refine, maintain, or update the culture, the impact on a leader, equity and inclusivity consideration, and inter-professional team involvement. This paper aims to explore the aspects of a leadership development plan for healthcare organizations for creating a culture of change.
Leadership Traits Useful for Creating a Culture of Change
Creating a culture of change in a healthcare organization requires a responsible person to primarily assess their traits and identify if crucial weaknesses exist and need elimination. An individual must be self-motivated to keep driving the work when challenges occur, communicate effectively to tailor the tasks for the diverse group of subordinates and be mentally stable to interact with them appropriately (Samdanis & Özbilgin, 2020). Besides, strategic and critical thinking are valuable traits for a leader to work on a culture of change and consider possible obstacles in advance (Cummings et al., 2020). Lastly, a person must be accountable, trustworthy, and have clear intentions as these characteristics encourage other people to follow.
Barriers to Change
A leadership development plan must include the analysis of possible barriers that prevent a healthcare facility’s culture from effective change. Indeed, emergency situations might require to mobilize employees, update the corporate structure, or switch the priorities. A leader can consider the barriers by including financial, workforce, and resourceful, supportive measures into the plan (Laur et al., 2021). The obstacles related to management issues, accountability, teamwork, or employees’ resistance can be addressed through regular communication with a leader and clear organizational values and mission statements.
Leadership Theory
Leadership theories are based on past experiences and scientific research; thus, studying and exercising them in the culture of change development is beneficial for a leader and organization. Healthcare facilities require the workforce to perform in critical situations, be a diverse yet strongly tied team, and keep the mission and values as priorities (Laur et al., 2021). Consequently, adaptive leadership, leader-member exchange, and servant theories can be utilized for building the culture of change. Precisely, adaptive leadership theory is the most appropriate for the development plan as it is based on maintaining flexibility and efficiency regardless of external threats.
Strategies to Use within Organization to Refine, Maintain, or Change The Culture
The culture of a healthcare organization impacts the employees’ decision-making and care providence; thus, refining it and maintaining it at the relevant level is crucial for leaders. The strategies to improve or pivot it include interpersonal and actionable aspects. The former requires a leader to be a role model who supports and respects organizational culture, openly communicates with the subordinates, and encourages them to change (Maamari & Saheb, 2018). Actionable tactics include the creation of feedback gathering and addressing mechanisms, rewarding policies, and programs that remind of the facility’s values (Maamari & Saheb, 2018). The leadership development plan can include motivational strategies, benchmarks to identify the most successful and respected employees, and schedule of encouragement-related events.
The Organizational Culture’s Effect on A Leader’s Ability to Drive Change
Organizational culture influences each person involved, and leaders’ ability to drive change might be affected by notions or norms formed at their organizations. For instance, the demand for diversity among all employees might become an obstacle for making cultural changes that require personnel to change departments (Samdanis & Özbilgin, 2020). Rules around financial operations, accounting, or rewarding policies might threaten a leader’s ability to drive change if these aspects are difficult to influence or involve higher executives.
Strategies for Nursing Leaders to Consider Equity and Inclusion in Decision-Making
Equity and inclusion are valuable to comply with within a leadership development plan because these facets reveal how an organization treats the employees and supports diversity among them. Furthermore, Morrison et al. (2021) state that “the nursing profession continues to struggle with recruiting and retaining a workforce that represents the cultural diversity of the patient population” (p. 312). A leader needs to implement commitment, cognizance of bias, cultural intelligence, and willingness to collaborate into the strategy to make decisions that respect equity (Cooper & Herrin, 2018). A development plan for driving an organizational culture of change must also include the priorities such as selecting efficiency over an employee’s background for a person in charge to check before taking actions.
Interprofessional Team Members Necessary for Planning and Implementing Changes
Exercising the culture of change in a healthcare facility involves team members of different professions because human resources, lawyers, physicians, nurses, and social workers can influence the novelties. An interprofessional team holistically represents an organization and can help a leader prevent strategic errors (Cummings et al., 2020). Collaborating with diverse segments’ representatives is also necessary for driving the culture of change from several departments simultaneously. A leadership development plan can contain regular meetings with the interprofessional team to observe the updates and discuss the issues.
Conclusion
A leader who drives the culture of change in a healthcare organization must comply with the specific aspects of work, address equity and inclusivity, encourage workers to thrive, and respect the values. A leadership development plan for implementing and maintaining the improvements can include different approaches to considering the teams’ basic needs and maintaining strong collaborative relationships between them. A person in charge needs to revise their traits, assess the limits of their organization, and involve colleagues of diverse fields to discuss and build the optimal strategy.
References
Cooper, T., & Herrin, A. (2018). Six signature traits of inclusive leadership. Harvard Business Review.
Cummings, G. G., Lee, S., Tate, K., Penconek, T., Micaroni, S. P., Paananen, T., & Chatterjee, G. E. (2020). The essentials of nursing leadership: A systematic review of factors and educational interventions influencing nursing leadership. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 115, 103842.
Laur, C. V., Agarwal, P., Mukerji, G., Goulbourne, E., Baranek, H., Pus, L., Bhatia, R. S., Martin, D., & Bhattacharyya, O. (2021). Building health services in a rapidly changing landscape: Lessons in adaptive leadership and Pivots in a COVID-19 remote monitoring program. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 23(1), e25507.
Maamari, B. E., & Saheb, A. (2018). How organizational culture and leadership style affect employees’ performance of genders. International Journal of Organizational Analysis, 26(4), 630-651. Web.
Morrison, V., Hauch, R. R., Perez, E., Bates, M., Sepe, P., & Dans, M. (2021). Diversity, equity, and inclusion in nursing: The pathway to excellence framework alignment. Nursing Administration Quarterly, 45(4), 311-323.
Samdanis, M., & Özbilgin, M. (2020). The duality of an atypical leader in diversity management: The legitimization and delegitimization of diversity beliefs in organizations. International Journal of Management Reviews, 22(2), 101-119.
