Introduction
Healthcare workers usually report the importance of effective leadership to stimulate their performance and teamwork because, working in stressful environments, they need additional motivation and stimuli. The problem is that having intensive workloads, healthcare providers are expected to demonstrate high-performance results and efficient teamwork to address patient needs, but they often suffer from poor motivation, frustration, and exhaustion (Sfantou et al., 2017). In this situation identified and properly discussed by researchers, attention should be paid to applying an appropriate leadership style to working with healthcare providers, and research indicates that the most efficient choice is transformational leadership (Musinguzi et al., 2018; Umrani & Afsar, 2019). Thus, transformation leadership is an approach that efficiently works to motivate healthcare staff to increase performance and teamwork and to improve patients’ outcomes because of inspiring healthcare workers, stimulating their progress, and respecting their individuality.
Body
Transformational Leadership to Increase Performance in Healthcare Staff
The leadership style or approach that is widely supported by researchers as related to employees’ high performance, job satisfaction, and commitment is transformation leadership, and this statement has supportive evidence also in the healthcare industry. According to Musinguzi et al. (2018), transformational leadership is associated with promoting “a collective sense of mission,” motivating and inspiring followers, and they begin to make more efforts to achieve goals (p. 22). Researchers agree that transformational leaders create positive working environments without pressure, negative emotions, and conflicts, and they stimulate healthcare providers to demonstrate their potential and skills (Ibrahim et al., 2016; Northouse, 2018; Sfantou et al., 2017). As a result, healthcare workers become more motivated, satisfied, task- and goal-oriented, and they improve their performance when being encouraged by leaders and becoming interested in addressing patients’ needs.
The relationship between leadership and employees’ performance in the healthcare sector was the purpose of many studies. Thus, Umrani and Afsar (2019) found that nurses become more innovation-oriented in their performance, more productive, and creative when they work with transformational leaders. However, accepting that transformational leadership provokes higher confidence and performance results in nurses, Ibrahim et al. (2016) did not report statistically significant results to support the correlation between leadership styles and nurses’ performance. The researchers stated that the problem could be in the limitations of the study but not in a weak hypothesis (Ibrahim et al., 2016). On the contrary, referring to the findings of a systematic literature review, Sfantou et al. (2017) found much evidence to support the idea that the transformational leadership approach is strictly correlated with improved performance in healthcare workers. The reason was in providing employees with more engagement, support, motivation, and independence.
When stimulating the healthcare staff to increase their performance and productivity, transformational leaders also contribute to improving the quality of patient care. Kartal (2018) explains this phenomenon concerning the fact that employees need to be highly motivated and empowered to be able to improve their performance. It is important to note that when the performance of employees is enhanced, the grounds for increased patient safety and positive outcomes appear. Researchers also paid much attention to comparing different types of leadership and their relationship to healthcare providers’ performance and patient outcomes. It has been supported by several studies, that transformational leadership usually demonstrates higher results in contrast to transactional and laissez-faire leadership (Sfantou et al., 2017). Therefore, researchers concluded that transformational leadership is correlated not only with employees’ performance but also with the quality of care and health outcomes for patients.
Transformational Leadership to Improve Teamwork in Healthcare Providers
Leadership also plays an important role in motivating and stimulating teamwork among healthcare workers because employees need to understand the importance of cooperating in teams. In this context, transformational leadership is regarded by researchers as a more effective approach than transactional leadership, situational leadership, or laissez-faire leadership because employees need to share the idea of teamwork (Musinguzi et al., 2018). According to Grubaugh and Flynn (2018), leaders are expected to manage teams and address conflicts to help healthcare providers work collaboratively to respond to patients’ needs. Thus, “teamwork among hospital personnel, including the willingness to assist team members as needed, is essentially an action to promote patient safety, reduce harm, and optimize patient outcomes” (Grubaugh & Flynn, 2018, p. 383). Leadership is of critical importance, in this context, to help employees build positive relationships and principles of cooperation based on sharing the same vision.
It is possible to state that transformational leadership is more significant in guaranteeing positive teamwork among healthcare workers. In comparison to other leadership styles or approaches, transformational leadership helps managers organize workers in working and highly-motivated teams (Grubaugh & Flynn, 2018). According to Musinguzi et al. (2018), such employees avoid many conflicts in a team organization process because they are stimulated by a leader to work on one critical goal supported by the same vision and idea. The problem is that the management of teams is often viewed as a challenging process because of a lot of conflicts and misunderstandings between healthcare team members. However, the role of a transformational leader in this context is to address these conflicts and issues and to effectively stimulate employees to improve their performance as a team to contribute to patients’ interests.
Patients’ outcomes and safety, the quality of provided treatment, and patients’ satisfaction increase when they are cared for by a group of medical professionals interested in assisting individuals. Therefore, leaders should guarantee they can influence positively the work of teams in a healthcare setting as this form of collaboration is typical for this environment (Musinguzi et al., 2018). When referring to the theory of leadership and related academic literature, it is possible to state that researchers name transformational leadership as a key approach in most cases (Sfantou et al., 2017). Transformational leaders are inclined to make the process of delivering care to individuals patient-oriented through motivating employees to work effectively to address patients’ needs (Ibrahim et al., 2016). Eliminating risks of conflicts in a healthcare environment and promoting a positive working atmosphere, transformational leaders significantly contribute to improving teamwork in hospitals and meeting patients’ interests.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it is important to note that analysis of the academic literature on the problem of leadership and its role in increasing healthcare employees’ performance and teamwork indicates that transformational leadership has the most remarkable results. Transformation leadership is a specific leadership style and approach that helps motivate healthcare professionals to improve their performance and teamwork, leading to better patients outcomes due to inspiring and stimulating medical workers, as well as respecting their individuality. It is stated by researchers that transformational leaders have specific traits and skills to change healthcare providers’ approaches to performance and work in teams. Transformational leaders encourage their followers, share certain visions and ideas with them, increase employees’ confidence and motivation. As a result, employees in healthcare settings can become more productive, and the quality of their performance can increase. These aspects can reasonably lead to positive changes in outcomes for patients in terms of their care and safety.
References
Grubaugh, M. L., & Flynn, L. (2018). Relationships among nurse manager leadership skills, conflict management, and unit teamwork. JONA: The Journal of Nursing Administration, 48(7/8), 383-388.
The researchers’ aim was to analyze the relationship between nurses’ perceptions of a nurse manager’s leadership, relations in a team, and conflict management. They conducted secondary analyses (multiple regressions) referring to the sample of 257 nurses. A positive relationship was found between the variables, and nurse perceptions of leadership are associated with team backup in hospital settings and conflict management. The results of this study help to understand how nurses’ perceptions of leadership can influence their relations in teams and the ability to avoid or manage conflicts.
Ibrahim, S. A. E., El Sayed, R. I., Attala, M. M., & Elmezin, N. K. (2016). Relationship between head nurses’ leadership styles and staff nurses’ job performance. IOSR Journal of Nursing and Science, 5(1), 66-74.
The researchers organized a correlational research for the purpose of assessing the relationship between leadership styles and the performance of nurses. The study was conducted in a hospital that was located in Egypt, and 110 nurses were recruited to participate in this research. The researchers found out that there was no statistically significant relationship between leadership and performance in examined nurses. The use of this study is important because it provides an alternative viewpoint regarding the correlation between leadership and performance of healthcare providers.
Kartal, N. (2018). Evaluating the relationship between work engagement, work alienation and work performance of healthcare professionals. International Journal of Healthcare Management, 11(3), 251-259.
The researcher examined the effect of work engagement in healthcare on professionals’ performance. The sample included 493 health professionals who work in different types of hospitals. As a result of a series of analyses, it was found out that there was a positive relationship between participants’ work engagement and their performance. The findings of this study are important to be used in this research because one of the used engagement dimensions was related to leadership, and these results are important to add to understanding the correlation between leadership and teamwork and nurses’ performance.
Musinguzi, C., Namale, L., Rutebemberwa, E., Dahal, A., Nahirya-Ntege, P., & Kekitiinwa, A. (2018). The relationship between leadership style and health worker motivation, job satisfaction and teamwork in Uganda. Journal of Healthcare Leadership, 10, 21-32.
In this study, the researchers were interested in finding the relationship between healthcare workers’ job performance, satisfaction, motivation, and teamwork. While applying a cross-sectional study in Uganda based on the correlational research design, the researchers found that transformational leadership was directly correlated with employees’ motivation, productivity, commitment, and teamwork. These results were compared by the researchers to the findings for transactional and laissez-faire leadership styles. The reference to this study is important for the current research because there is a lack of literature in order to examine the relationship between leadership and teamwork in healthcare settings.
Northouse, P. G. (2018). Leadership: Theory and practice (8th ed.). SAGE Publications.
Sfantou, D. F., Laliotis, A., Patelarou, A. E., Sifaki-Pistolla, D., Matalliotakis, M., & Patelarou, E. (2017). Importance of leadership style towards quality of care measures in healthcare settings: A systematic review. Healthcare, 5(4), 1-17.
The researchers conducted a systematic review of academic literature in order to determine how a specific leadership style can be important in improving the quality of care in healthcare. They reviewed 18 studies that were published during the period of 2004-2015 and addressed the inclusion criteria for the research. It was found out that leadership styles can be directly related to employees’ performance and the quality of care in hospitals. This study is important for the research paper because the findings help to find the relationship between transformational leadership and healthcare workers’ performance influencing the quality of care.
Umrani, W. A., & Afsar, B. (2019). How transformational leadership impacts innovative work behaviour among nurses. British Journal of Healthcare Management, 25(12), 1-16.
In this study, the purpose was to determine the effect of transformational leadership on the work or performance of the nursing staff. In order to address the research goals, it was important to recruit 367 registered nurses in addition to 69 nurse managers. As a result of the quantitative analysis, the researchers found that transformational leadership was positively related to nurses’ innovative work, psychological empowerment, and performance. The results of this research are of critical importance as they provide evidence for the idea that different types of leadership (transformational leadership in particular) can be related to changes in nurses’ performance, behaviours, and teamwork.