An Appraisal Report of the Leadership Styles Within your Workplace in Transactional Leaderships

Transmittal letter
I submit herewith a report examining the transactional leadership style at the work place. The report further evaluates the multicultural elements of the health care system in Saudi Arabia and establishes a development plan to help with incorporating women in the health care sector. The reports further establishes ways to refine the health care system in Saudi Arabia to reduce cultural conflict associated with expatriates and their patient.
Regards,
Name:
Leadership
Name:
Institution:
Course:
Date:
Executive Summary
The nursing field is one of the most complex professions relative to the fact that nurses have to practice utmost efficiency in their field as part of the duties and ethical requirements. More often than not the nurses are going to be faced with a dynamic health situation, which relates to the diseases, medication, policies, patient’s preferences, cultural differences, religious differences and organizational polices among others. Every other situation is unique and nurses have to have the right skills and in the right environment to conduct their duties optimally. Leadership pays a major role in guiding the field through the dynamic challenges faced in the field. Transactional leadership style is one of the two main styles established in the leadership realm of organizations. It is style that is largely associated with reward and punishment as their pivotal points. Leaders using this style are largely concerned with smooth running of the operations other that positioning the organization in the market relative to growth. As such, leaders will easily reward the staffs following the guidelines set out and punish those that do not. In this case the leader makes all the decisions and the staffs are expected to follow the guidelines from their leaders to the letter. In light of the nursing field in Saudi Arabia, the health care system is struggling with cultural conflict which has in turn lead to low satisfaction among the staffs and the patients as well as poor output. As part of making sure that the health care sector is benefiting from multicultural diversity, the Saudi Arabian government should develop mechanisms to make sure that they include more women in the workforce. This will assist in making sure that the economy is education based and further reduce the discrepancy in foreign and local workers that is leading to cultural conflict in the health care sector and compromising on quality of care.
Table of Contents TOC \o "1-3" \h \z \u Introduction PAGEREF _Toc441162886 \h 5Transactional leadership theory PAGEREF _Toc441162887 \h 6Style of Leadership PAGEREF _Toc441162888 \h 7Transactional leadership in nursing PAGEREF _Toc441162889 \h 8Multicultural Workforce in Saudi Arabian Hospitals PAGEREF _Toc441162890 \h 10Development Plan PAGEREF _Toc441162891 \h 12Conclusion PAGEREF _Toc441162892 \h 18References PAGEREF _Toc441162893 \h 19
Introduction
Nursing is a complex field that riddled with complex dynamism and a constant element of life and death situations. Nurses have to be very effective to make sure that they offer the best heath care, as part of the duties and ethical obligations. Due to the fact that there are quite a number of developments that take place during the treatment of a patient, nurses have to be cautious relative to the medical interventions that apply (Home.snu.edu, 2016). Different patients will react differently to certain ailments and treatments, which makes nursing quite a complex profession. Every patient is unique and require special attention in terms of their medical treatments and their social wellbeing. This is to mean that, not all patients will have the same objectives for the treatment plan. Some of the patient will have some additional demands in light of their social orientations as well as cultural and religious. Thus the complexity of treating patient comes with a high level of diversity and uniqueness that is underlined by the different personalities exhibited by the different patients.
Other than the patients, nurses are obligated to follow the basic legal guidelines and institutional bylaws that govern the medical practices and the individual institutions respectively. There are different cultures that are found at the work place and they determine the elemental baseline that every other nurse and other medical practitioners are supposed to follow (Casida, 2007). Organizational culture has for the longest time been the pivotal aspect that guides the various ways that practices are carried out in any institutions, in the medical institutions, the situation is not different as every institution has its own unique culture that guides the different parties. Leadership practices are part of the organizational culture. Different health care institutions will have different leadership styles that underline the objectives of the institution in question. This means that every institution is governed by a set of practices that can be traced to the leadership style adopted in the organizational culture.
There are two main leadership theories that try to explain the basic elements of leadership that can be applied. Transactional and transformational leadership theories and the two main ones that can be used to classify the basic leadership practices in most of the organizations (Aarons, 2006). In some of the cases, leaders try to mix the two theories to come up with a hybrid that fits in with the specific needs and objectives of the organization in question (Jones, 2014). This paper however concentrate on the transactional theory of leadership and how it impacts the nursing practices.
Transactional leadership theory
This is a theory that advocates for rewards and punishment as ways of getting the workforce motivated to do what is expected of them at the work place. As such, when the theory is applied in the workplace, staff are rewarded for the good work they do in light of achieving their goals and objectives of the organization. However, if the staffs in question do not achieve the expected goals and objectives they are punished. This means that the staffs are constantly trying to achieve their goals for the promise of the rewards or the fear of the punishment. This is a theory that best works in workplaces that have clear chain of command (Aarons, 2006). This means that the staffs on the lower levels have agreed to the terms that include ceding part or all the authority to the managers or those higher in the chain of command. As such, the staffs have to be ready to do what their managers advice or instruct. Ideally, the managers play the most crucial role of making decisions (Joe, 2016). Such that decision making is not a shared responsibility between those on the different teams, but rather an factor of the managers taking control of the groups decisions and passing down instructions to the team members on how best to achieve the goals and objectives established.
Style of Leadership
In the transactional style of leadership of leadership, only works where there are clearly established structures. Such that the organization in question has different hierarchical structure, where managers are responsible for governing those in the lower levels of the structure such as teams. This means that there are managers and the subordinate that come right below them. The structure may further extend, executive and further down to the non-medical staffs on the facility. As such, in this case, the decision are made by the managerial or the executive levels of management and then passed on the lower levels in the form of instructions. The rewards are then associated with following the orders or the instructions with utmost precision or for achieving certain goals that have been established in the instructions. In this style of leadership, managers issue out the instructions and the staffs have the full responsibility of the tasks at hand (Joe, 2016). This means that, any of the mistakes that come up during the excursion of the said activities, are the responsibility of the staffs that were given the task. As such, they are also supposed to be punished for not delivering according to the expected standards. In case, they perform the tasks at or above the expected standards, they are rewarded. In an example, where a nurse is allocated a cancer patient who is supposed to be given medication for their chemotherapy sessions and the nurse misses one of the dosage, the nurse is supposed to be professionally punished for their mistake.
On the other hand, if the nurse follows the said instructions and even helps the patient feel better and the family members, the nurse is rewarded for outstanding work and exceeding the expectations of the managers and the patient. With this style of leadership, there is an underlying element that sets it apart from the transformational style of leadership. Ideally in the transactional style of leadership, the leaders look at the operational aspect of the various functions at the work place. This is to mean that, when all the functions are operating the expected baseline without any disturbance then, this is enough operational threshold (Joe, 2016). As such, the leaders will only intervene when the functions fall below the expected operational threshold. Performance thus plays a very subtle role in this style of management and rewards and punishments act as contingents.
Transactional leadership in nursing
It is crucial for the nursing leaders to understand the basic aspects of the transactional leadership and what is expected of them and the staffs that are under them. This means that managers need to understand the different leadership styles before they can engage them in their place of work. Ideally there are different aspects to consider before applying the leadership style of choice (Libsekal, 2006). Nurse Managers have to make sure that they understand the leadership styles so as it is much easier for them to determine what is going to work and what is not, relative to the underlying objectives and the culture. The leadership style chosen has to be in the best interest of both the managers and the staffs, while addressing the various objectives that are directed at the facilities and most importantly the patients and their outcomes (Joe, 2016).
As mentioned earlier, transactional leadership relates to routine transactions in relation to rewards and punishments. As such, in the case of the nursing field, this relates to transactions that are conducted between the nurse leaders and their staffs, as it is based on the idea that staffs are motivated by discipline and rewards. In the nursing field as such, a leader using the transactional leadership style, will generally be concerned by the smoothness with which the health care delivery functions are flowing other than the future positioning of the staffs or the facility in question (Mindtools.com, 2016). As such, their focus would be on the refined routines where every other staffs is doing what they are supposed to be doing relative to their duties and the threshold set out at the facility or by the teams. This further means that, as far as all the staffs are working on their duties without any form of disruption in quality or delivery, the nurse manager is going to be content with the output (Almutairi, Gardner & McCarthy, 2013). There are a number of focal points that are notable in the case of a transactional nurse leader among them the fact that, they have the complete authority over their teams or the staffs are under them in terms of the organizational structure. This means that, the rest of the team members are at the ultimate guidance of their leader. This further connects to the focal point related to the fact that, in light of the authority placed in the leader, the rest of the members in the team are supposed at all times to follows the directives, instructions or the advice given by the leader. It is also important to note that in most of the cases, the rewards to those staffs that have maintained the basic routines, comes in form of paychecks. Discipline, on the other hand for the staffs that have not the bare minimum threshold set out, comes in form job termination or suspension from work along with forced leave or monetary penalties. This means that, if a nurse is found to have failed in their duties, they may suspended from active duty or their employment may be terminated. On the other hand, if a nurse if found to have been consistently followed the setout guidelines, they may be awarded bonuses. Transactional leadership in the nursing field has been found to work well with staffs that are lowly skilled such as the CNAs who may be supervised by an RN or LPN. However, transactional leadership has also been found to impede independent thinking and the level of creativity in the staffs that have more sharpened skills in the nursing field (Mindtools.com, 2016). This is relative to the fact that, even aspects such d...