Laissez Faire Leadership: Characteristics, Effectiveness - An Essay.

1. Critique contemporary clinical leadership approaches in nursing and midwifery practice.
2 Differentiate between leadership and management in relation to clinical nursing or midwifery practice.
3 Appraise facilitators and barriers to effective clinical leadership in the provision of optimal person and woman-centred care at different levels of experience in nursing and midwifery practice.
4 Evaluate strategies for change and innovation processes in contemporary primary healthcare contexts.
5 Apply strategies required for effective building, motivating and leading of collaborative healthcare teams in clinical practice.

Commonly used leadership approaches in clinical setting

Laissez-faire, transformational, transactional, situational, autocratic and participative leadership approaches are some of the most commonly used in clinical setting. Leaders adapt to different styles based on their attributes or the situation at hand. Laissez-faire is centered on allowing employees to have their discretion in various activities. Nurse leaders who use this leadership style leave clinical setting activities to take their course devoid of their interference (Sfantou, Laliotis, Patelarou, Sifaki-Pistolla, Matalliotakis & Patelarou,2017). This paper focuses on Laissez Faire Leadership Style.

It has been defined as one of the most remarkable leadership styles. This leadership approach involves giving group members decision-making ability by their leader. There is a motivation effect that usually comes with autonomy. When team members are left to make their own independent decisions, they tend to be more motivated. Laissez-faire is centered on giving employees the freedom to decide on their own. Leaders assign specific roles to team members and leave them to work independently on their allocated tasks (Skogstad, Hetland, Glasø & Einarsen,2014).

For highly skilled nurses, this leadership style can be quite effective. By having the freedom to decide on what is best for them to do; they become more satisfied with their work and feel to be freer within their working environment (Negussie & Demissie, 2013). Because such professionals possess the necessary skills and are highly motivated even when working on their own, this leadership style has the potential of making them more productive (Giltinane, 2013). They thrive more when left to work independently. This style is, therefore, the most suitable for meeting specific outcomes and objectives where highly skilled nurses are involved. It also has a positive impact on their engagement because they tend to be more productive when left to make own decisions.

However, in a situation where members of a team lack the necessary experience and skill required to make effective decisions, Laissez-faire approach can be quite detrimental for the achievement of for the achievement of specific outcomes and targets. Such people cannot often make their own decisions and follow them without feedback or guidance from their leaders. Without support from their leader's such members tend to to lack motivation and tend to be more disengaged from their work (Skogstad et al.,2014). The absence of these aspects, therefore, leads to a negative impact on the realization of specific objectives and outcomes.

My preferred leadership style is Laissez-Faire. Under this leadership approach leaders adopt an hands off approach and allow individuals to make their own decisions. The general assumption by leaders is that people do extremely well when left alone to carry out their own obligations and responsibilities(Zareen, Razzaq & Mujtaba, 2015). The following are some of its attributes

Definition and motivation effect of Laissez Faire Leadership Style

Laissez-Faire leadership approach is characterized by more delegation and little influence by leaders. There is a delegation of almost everything. The underlying principle for laissez-faire leadership approach is that given all the necessary resources, group members can function independently (Zareen, Razzaq & Mujtaba, 2015).

The leadership style is also extremely passive in that apart from offering the necessary resources; leaders do not don’t oversee the process of using them. Leaders have trust in their group members and believe that they can come up with own solutions if left alone. Employees are therefore left to decide on what they consider to wrong or right in the course of their practice. A laissez Faire leader only checks results and observes how employees are doing their work but do not interfere with what they are doing (Zareen, Razzaq & Mujtaba, 2015).

My group adopted a Laissez-Faire leadership style. Through this leadership approach the group leader left individual group members to work on their own without interruptions. Each individual member had the freedom to decide on what they felt was important in the realization of group’s objective. I also played a critical role in the success of the group by working together with other group members and completing my assigned responsibilities.

Conclusion

Teams tend to be more cohesive in settings where leaders are actively involved. They oversee the overall progress of the group and offer the necessary support. With reduced control and leader’s intervention, laissez-Faire makes teams less cohesive. Individual members may develop less concern for the roles assigned to them or develop a feeling of their work not being valued. The approach has been found to lead to lead to lowest productivity where teams are involved.

References

Giltinane, C. L. (2013). Leadership styles and theories. Nursing Standard, 27(41).

Negussie, N., & Demissie, A. (2013). Relationship between leadership styles of nurse managers and nurses’ job satisfaction in Jimma University specialized hospital. Ethiopian journal of health sciences, 23(1), 50-58.

Sfantou, D. F., Laliotis, A., Patelarou, A. E., Sifaki-Pistolla, D., Matalliotakis, M., & Patelarou, E. (2017, October). Importance of Leadership Style towards Quality of Care Measures in Healthcare Settings: A Systematic Review. In Healthcare (Vol. 5, No. 4, p. 73). Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute.

Skogstad, A., Hetland, J., Glasø, L., & Einarsen, S. (2014). Is avoidant leadership a cause of subordinate stress? Longitudinal relationships between laissez-faire leadership and role ambiguity. Work & Stress, 28(4), 323-341.

Wong, C. A. (2015). Connecting nursing leadership and patient outcomes: state of the science. Journal of Nursing Management, 23(3), 275-278.

Zareen, M., Razzaq, K., & Mujtaba, B. G. (2015). Impact of transactional, transformational and laissez-faire leadership styles on motivation: A quantitative study of banking employees in Pakistan. Public Organization Review, 15(4), 531-549.