Principles of Leadership in Healthcare

"Leaders are people who are able to express themselves fully…they know who they are, what their strengths and weaknesses are, and how to fully deploy their strengths and compensate for their weaknesses. They also know what they want, why they want it, and how to communicate what they want to others in order to gain their cooperation and support. Finally they know how to achieve their goals" (Ingram, 2004). Leadership is a difficult task, by which a person impacts others to accomplish an objective. While this is a challenging situation in any field, it is of extreme significance in the healthcare setting, where quality of service, trust, and ultimately people's lives are dependant. In addition, leadership-- whether it be positive or negative-- will have a direct implication on staff interactions, continuous quality improvement, and risk management. Thus the ability to establish oneself as an effective leader involves a process of successfully employing characteristics such as communication, trust, guiding vision, knowledge, equity, and ethics.
The first characteristic a leader should apply is communication. Communication is the transmission of information and views from one person to another. The ability to communicate a vision ranks among the key tasks of a leader, and all organizations depend on the existence of shared meaning and interpretations of reality to facilitate coordinated action (Leadership Advisory Commission, 2003). The act of communication begins with a thought within the intellect of the transmitter. This idea is then conveyed to a recipient through actions or statements. The recipient then interprets these actions and statements into an abstract idea. Listening is the key to communication and the information is useless if it is not expressed in the right manner, making the ability to communicate a clear and shared vision is an essential task of a leader. The combination of a compelling vision and effective communication skills inspires people

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