Reference no: EM133417132

Question: Review, reflect on, and respond to your colleagues' postings. Explain any insights you have gained about the relationship between servant leadership and effective leadership. Then, explain how you might integrate those insights into your role as a current or future health care administration leader.

Case Study: Colleagues post

The Servant Leadership model/paradigm proposed in 1970 by Robert K. Greenleaf in his seminal work The Servant as Leader quickly gained traction across several disciplines and global audiences, particularly among leaders in business, education, healthcare, government, ministry/religion, politics, and nonprofit organizations (NPO; 2016). Servant leaders focus on their followers rather than themselves; they do not let self-interest drive their actions (Greenleaf, 2002). Thus, servant leaders' inspiration and motivation spring from something greater than themselves and requires selflessness in service to others (Greenleaf, 2002). Servant leaders nurture and empower individuals to grow, achieve their highest potential, and strive to influence them by providing vision and establishing credibility and trust (Greenleaf, 2002). Competing priorities and interests of healthcare stakeholders is an ongoing event that creates some of the most critical challenges for healthcare administration leaders (HealthKnowledge, 2017). Though it is not a single event, opposing stakeholder interests are inextricably linked to health services fluctuations, financial/market volatility, and emerging and shifting trends that healthcare leaders must confront. Competing healthcare stakeholders' priorities and interests affect healthcare costs, access, and quality, which pose several challenges to healthcare organizations (HCOs) and their decision-makers, who often demand alternative approaches (Adedokun, 2017). HCOs often promise integrated and coordinated health services with meaningful clinical outcomes for the human community but cannot due to the business element of healthcare (Hillemeier et al., 2003). Still, several factors influence individuals' and communities' health, including their environment and circumstances, two significant determinants influencing healthcare access and outcomes (Adedokun, 2017; World Health Organization). Healthcare stakeholders are usually assumed to advocate for patients' best interests, yet many prioritize assets and profit margins over human needs (Sullivan, 2014). Therefore, servant leadership is critical for delivering affordable, accessible, high-quality healthcare. A more specific example of opposing stakeholder interest within the healthcare industry is the disparity/inequality in access to insulin and the leading US pharmaceutical companies Eli Lilly and Co., Novo Nordisk A/S, and Sanofi SA) need for price flexibility (Meller, 2019). Insulin availability is a matter of life and death for people with Type 1 diabetes (Cressman, 2019). However, despite insulin's availability since the 1920s, its cost has only increased over the years. From 2002 to 2013, the cost of insulin went from $4.34 to $12.92 per milliliter (McClatchey, 2016).

Healthcare stakeholders, like pharmaceutical companies, can eliminate many disparities if they adopt the servant leadership style and consider critical factors like people's living conditions and the quality of their environment, demography, income, and education levels, all of which substantially impact access to healthcare services and health outcomes (WHO, 2017). Though contextual and individual determinants can make it harder for HCOs to deliver health products and services, servant leadership can make it easier for those who require products like insulin but cannot afford it (Scott, 2017; Hillemeier et al., 2003). Operations that require careful resource allocation based on disparities and inequities would thrive with servant leadership (Zou et al., 2015; Dierendonck, 2011). Although other leadership styles can be effective, healthcare leaders who adopt a servant leadership style may obtain better outcomes (Patrnchak, 2015). Still, customizing one's leadership style to include transformational, transactional, and servant leadership may yield the best results. Healthcare executives can use transformational leadership to create campaigns to motivate stakeholders, transactional leadership to maximize performance, and servant leadership to secure and allocate resources to those with the most need (Aarum, 2018). Servant leaders think of ways to inspire, honor, empower, and serve. When making decisions regarding the health and well-being of others, servant leaders also consider ethics and combine organizational focus with flexibility (Jaramillo et al., 2015). For example, where a transactional leader would consider performance and profits when considering health insurance for diabetics, a servant leader would consider how healthcare insurance would/should impact people and groups more likely to experience diabetes and would work to educate individuals, raise awareness about diabetes, or focus on personal behavior and coping skills to help those with diabetes (Andersen, 2018; Chatterji & Zsolnai, 2016).