Guest Editorial

The end of another year for all usually signals a time for reflection and, for the brave, sometimes an assessment of what has been achieved. Looking back, a considerable number of initiatives are underway and there is much of which we can be proud.

The success of this year’s activity could not have taken place without effective leadership. While there are many theories about leadership styles, I would argue that the health sector with its distributed and federated structure requires a unique leadership style to be effective.

Leadership is often tied into issues of personality and is, thus, sometimes defined in terms of personality characteristics. Others have equated leadership with psychological distinctions and have therefore characterised leadership in psychological terms.

Prior to the midde of the twentieth century, the "Great Man or Woman" theory held ground in the minds of those seeking to define leadership’s most elusive quality. Support for the "Great Man or Woman" definition can be tempting when you look back in history and reference J. F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, or Mother Teresa as examples of great men or women whose innate abilities have been connected somehow with situational forces.

However, after searching for the truth in discussions with enthusiastic local MBA scholars, I have to concede that many modern theorists consider the proposition that leaders are born and not made to be myth and instead regard leadership to be a learned skill.

This conclusion did seem somewhat hasty given the season and its main characters of Jesus and Santa. So to refocus, and putting aside possible gender choices, it would seem that Santa as Chief Executive Officer of one of the world’s most distributed and federated organisations would certainly support the great man or woman theory.

With a world customer base, Santa seems to go unchallenged. No matter how much we may envy his skill and talent and how greatly we desire to emulate this, unless we are born with certain extraordinary endowments to alter space and time, it would seem there will always be only one Santa.

To succeed in the health sector it often feels as though it would be useful to be able to acquire or nurture some of Santa’s skill for delivering on the impossible or, failing that, learn or nurture an effective way to get things done in a fragmented environment that is often changing. Leadership for health is about working with others to bring ideas into action, looking for what is missing, researching possibilities and making decisions. Leadership is the processes of bringing communities together and forging new realities.

This approach is best described as symbiotic focused on win-win business partnership as opposed to the hierarchical leadership paradigm. Symbiotic leadership enhances performance by promoting contributions from all organisational members and trust provides the keystone of symbiotic leadership. Organisations are interdependent partners, each contributing to the success and survival of each other.

This would seem an ideal model for the health sector and there may even be room for Santa as we all help him succeed as the year comes to a close.

Merry Christmas to you all.

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