Health and Social Care and Leadership

According to The National Skills Academy (no date) the skills that a leadership role in health and social care should have are the ability to:

•          Deliver the strategy
•          Demonstrate personal qualities
•          Work with others
•          Manage services
•          Improve services
•          Set direction
•          Create a vision

Many of these leadership skills can be incorporated into many other areas, for example the role of a businessman like Lord Alan Sugar. His career and status as an entrepreneur allow him to deliver these leadership skills in his own field of work.

Lewin (1939) is known for differentiating leadership styles in to three categories these being autocratic, democratic and laissez-faire leaders. 

• Autocratic leader: an individual who does not interact or seek involvement with the work force in terms of decision making.

• Democratic leader: someone who is able to interact and involve others when making decisions. This could be considered as the idealistic approach when working in an health and social care environment. However as a leader they would expect input from other team members and in turn have the final decision and take full responsibility.

• Laissez-faire leader: the leader is not fully involved with the decision making and relies on the work force for their participation. This may be effective when achieving motivation and responsibility but could also lead to difficulties when gaining an effective result. 

Hershey and Blanchard (1988) identified leadership styles in two different behaviours these being, ‘directive behaviour and supportive behaviour’.

• Directive behaviour: is somewhat similar to a hard approach where the leader has the final say and others won’t have that much of an input this may result in low motivation.

• Supportive behaviour: is where the leader follows more of a soft approach where the leader will want the group to be forthcoming and encourage them as well as involving them in decisions.

Hershey and Blanchard continued to identify four different types of leaders these being; directing, coaching, supporting and delegating. 

• A directing leader: oversees the group and is quite autocratic. Communication is not key as the leader makes all the decisions.

• A coaching leader: is someone who delegates roles and is able to run discussions as well as participating themselves. this could be related to Lord Alan Sugar as he delegates roles in The Apprentice and listens to the feedback.

• A supporting leader and a delegating leader are similar in the fact that within both styles, the power is given to the work force rather than the leader. In a delegating leadership style, the leader gives roles to certain members of the team to solve problems. Although it is the leaders decision to determine the outcome. On the other hand, a supporting leader would partake in the decision process and would pass tasks onto other members of the group. 

According to The King’s Fund they believe a leader should be ‘flexible’ and able to be direct and delegate roles. A leader should also work interactively with their workforce especially in cases of decision-making. In relation to Lord Alan Sugar, an example of his leadership is evident in the TV show; The Apprentice. Here he works closely with his colleagues by assigning them to monitor the groups and allowing them to make judgements on their practice. The King’s Fund proceeds to state that a leader should be able to identify the challenging settings of health and social care practices. Therefore they should be able to work effectively in teams as well as other institutes. Within Lord Alan Sugar’s businesses, he shows signs of this by working closely with other companies. For example for Amstrad he worked closely with British Sky Broadcasting and provided the products needed. The two companies had to work closely together in order to make decisions on the basis of what would be seen as (cost) effective and efficient.

The health and social care sector is a huge organisation within society, as time has gone on it has grown and become more prevalent. Everybody relies on the health and social care services that are provided resulting in professionals taking on new and challenging roles. Professionals who enter this sector may not be aware that they could be in a position of leadership and responsibility. It could be argued that some of these professionals are not trained or experienced in leading, so it is necessary for appropriate training to be provided (Addicott no date).This suggests that being a leader is learnt (nurture) rather than biologically (nature). 

Becoming a leader requires knowledge, skills and qualities relevant to being a successful leader. Within the health and social care sector and being a leader, it is vital to understand that patients would be seriously affected by a leaders decision making. For example, a Doctor considered as a leader, would have to make the vital decisions to stop trying to resuscitate an individual who is not responding. Another example would be a social worker making the decision to remove a child from their biological parents. These examples show decision making that will have a major change for individuals. In regards to Lord Sugar being a leader and making decisions that will influence people’s lives, this might not be on a personal platform like health and social care. Lord Sugar would have the decision making of firing people, this has been seen in The Apprentice where every week he has to decide whom to fire. This choice would still have a personal influence on the individuals life but wouldn't be a huge contributing factor to change.

Similarly Industry Profiles (2013) emphasise that a health and social care professional must also have qualities such as interpersonal skills, time management, patience, flexibility and the ability to work under pressure. It is also stated that the structure of the health and social care sector is currently moving from a hierarchical and bureaucratic ethos to a more open learning culture approach. This will create changes in decision making processes and the open admittance of mistakes to allow effective service improvement. However, when analysing how Lord Alan Sugar would manage in a field such as health and social care where the system is becoming less hierarchical and bureaucratic, he may struggle to function in this way. Lord Alan Sugar is typically known for operating in a hierarchical structure where he is the ‘top dog’ or boss. His harsh approach and tough personality express the challenges he may face in attempting to be a compassionate, empathetic character with a caring nature when supporting service users in need. As a result, Lord Alan Sugar may not be well suited to adopt this sort of a profession as his qualities might not match those of a successful health and social care professional. His leadership role may be too high on his agenda that it is what he has become best at performing.