Common leadership styles are most effective when flexed to meet the needs of the time and scenario in which a leader is acting. When you’re a leader in healthcare, the priorities may look different and require taking a different approach to your preferred leadership style.
Common Leadership Styles
Each leadership style has unique traits and comes with pros and cons. No leadership style is wrong, but the best style depends on the situation and the people you lead. Some common styles include:
- Authoritarian – Clear hierarchy with centralized control; the leader makes decisions and expects compliance.
- Participative – Allows input from team members, but the leader is the final decision-maker.
- Delegative – Entrusts team members to act independently with little guidance.
- Transactional – Employees join the team in exchange for compensation; this style may curtail creativity but allows for supervision as needed.
Leadership Styles Beneficial for Healthcare Leaders
As a leader in the healthcare industry, your priorities vary and may shift with little notice. From focusing on patient care to ensuring regulatory compliance and adapting to the changing healthcare landscape, your ability to flex leadership styles can benefit your team in many situations.
Each style has a time and place. There may be opportunities to use delegative or participative leadership, and other scenarios may require you to lead as an authoritarian. Other leadership styles can bring unique angles to managing clinicians and healthcare professionals while creating opportunities for them to learn.
Transformational leadership creates positive change to reach business goals and motivates team members to achieve their full potential. It encompasses four segments: individualized consideration, inspirational motivation, idealized influence, and intellectual stimulation.
Servant leaders empower others and act with self-awareness and empathy toward the people they lead, with consideration for the impact of their decisions.
Coaching leadership involves constructive feedback, offering guidance, and opportunities to grow. This style prompts collaboration and teamwork, and leaders who are invested in each team member’s development.
While you may have a preferred leadership style, practicing varying styles can help you grow as a leader and lead your team more effectively.
