QUARTERLY BEAT / JULY 2024
LEVERAGING LEADERSHIP: HOW LEADERS CAN CREATE CONFIDENT, EMPOWERED TEAMS
DR. WENDY HAUSER
In this VETgirl Webinar, “Leveraging Leadership: How Leaders Can Create Confident, Empowered Teams” from June 5, 2024 by Dr. Wendy Hauser of Peak Veterinary Consulting reviews how leaders can adapt in this post-pandemic world. In case you missed the webinar, watch it again HERE or read the cliff notes below!
· Authoritative: Clearly conveys the vision and invites employees to be part of the process; allows the team autonomy in how they achieve the goal. · Affiliative: Relational leadership approach, where people come first, goals and tasks second. This approach positively influences empathy and communication. · Democratic: Collaborative approach, where team members’ perspectives are elicited and incorporated in creating business initiatives. Outcomes are trust, respect, and organizational commitment. · Pacesetting: High-performance standards are set and role-modeled by the leader. Employees who cannot meet these high demands become demoralized; due to rigidity, autonomy in how work is done is greatly diminished. · Coaching: Helps employees identify and achieve career goals. Delegates effectively and understands that short-term failure is a learning opportunity that leads to long-term learning and results. A veterinary leader may use multiple leadership styles throughout the day. For example, when managing a critical emergency, the leader may be very ‘coercive’ and directive, which is needed to lead the team during a stressful event. When trying to gain buy-in for a new hospital initiative, both the ‘democratic’ and ‘affiliative’ styles are helpful.
The pandemic and its aftermath have created permanent changes in the way businesses operate, with significant impacts on veterinary hospitals. Stress and anxiety, commonplace in practices pre-pandemic, have increased significantly with operational changes and uncertainty related to personal wellbeing and economic security. To manage these changes, leadership must adapt to help both their teams and veterinary hospitals thrive. Leaders need to expand their skill sets to create favorable practice conditions, where employees are empowered, and leaders successfully manage themselves by understanding how their actions (or lack of actions) impacts their followers. What are ways that leaders can adapt to the ever-changing needs of the veterinary workforce? LEADERSHIP STYLES Seminal research 1 conducted in the early 2000’s identified that leaders’ emotions influence and shape their leadership style, which directly impacts workplace culture and psychological safety. In a related article 2 six leadership styles were identified:
· Coercive: Employees must comply with the leader’s wishes; characterized by top-down leadership style that excludes the employee in decision-making and daily operational processes.
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