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The purpose of this paper is to assess the extent to which the LEADS Framework guided health-care leaders through organizational change and the COVID-19 pandemic in a western Canadian province.

A qualitative exploratory inquiry assessed the extent to which health leaders applied competencies that aligned with the LEADS Framework. A purposeful sample of 22 health-care leaders participated in the study representing senior, mid-level and front-line health-care leaders in various health-care organizations to ensure diverse representation of leader competencies. The authors conducted semi-structured interviews to collect the data and used Braun and Clarke’s (2006) six-phase approach to guide data analysis.

The analysis suggests that health-care leaders found Engaging with Others and Developing Coalitions were the most critical themes of the LEADS Framework for change management and for navigating the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings reveal that during transformational change and a crisis context, leaders embrace relational approaches to adapt and improve performance in dynamic organizations.

These findings have implications for a relational approach to improve teamwork and decrease emotional strain; a focus on mobilizing and sharing power with nurses; and educational programs to advance relational and self-management skills, shared leadership, communication, change management, human resource and talent development as critical learning components for current and future health-care leaders.

The LEADS Framework is used to examine how health-care leaders responded to transformational change in the organization while situated in a pandemic context.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the direct and indirect crossover effects of leaders’ exhaustion on followers’ somatic complaints by testing leaders’ health-oriented behavior toward employees as a possible underlying mechanism.

A two-wave online study using data from different sources was conducted. In a sample of 106 leaders and followers, leaders were paired with one or two followers. Leaders rated their level of exhaustion at Time 1, and followers rated their leaders’ health-oriented leadership behavior (i.e. StaffCare behavior) and their own level of somatic complaints three months later (Time 2).

Results provided evidence of an indirect crossover effect from leaders’ exhaustion to followers’ somatic complaints through StaffCare behavior. There was no direct crossover effect.

Findings suggest that organizations should attend to leaders’ health as a means to allow for StaffCare behavior and thus protect employee health.

StaffCare behavior represents a new concept that focuses on health-related aspects of leadership. This is the first study to take an in-depth look at the question of how this leadership behavior is tied to crossover from leader exhaustion to follower health.

The purpose of this paper is to expand attention to responsible leader behavior in the world’s health sectors by explaining how this concept applies to health sectors, considering why health sector leaders should behave responsibly, reviewing how they can do so, and asserting potential impact through an applied example.

This paper is a viewpoint, reflecting conceptualizations rooted in leadership literature which are then specifically applied to health sectors. A definition of responsible leader behavior is affirmed and applied specifically in health sectors. Conceptualizations and viewpoints about practice of responsible leader behavior in health sectors and potential consequences are then discussed and asserted.

Leadership failures and debacles found in health, but more so in other sectors, have led leadership researchers to offer insights, many of them empirical, into the challenges of leadership especially by more clearly delineating responsible leader behavior.

Much of what has been learned in the research about responsible leader behavior offers pathways for health sector leaders to more fully practice responsible leadership.

This paper asserts and provides a supporting example that greater levels of responsible leader behavior in health sectors hold potentially important societal benefits.

This paper is the first to apply emerging conceptualizations and early empirical findings about responsible leader behavior specifically to leaders in health sectors.

This study explored how organizational leaders at different hierarchical levels may communicatively enhance employees' health and well-being. Drawing on interdisciplinary research, it proposed a model that connects health-oriented leadership communication at supervisory and executive levels with remote workers' self-care and stress levels during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Data collected through a survey of 363 full-time United States (US) employees were analyzed to test the model.

Results showed health-oriented communication at the two leadership levels directly influenced employees' self-care, which in turn reduced their stress levels. Further, executive leaders' health-oriented leadership communication indirectly impacted remote workers' self-care through its positive association with supervisors' health-oriented leadership communication.

This study offers much-needed guidelines for executive leaders, supervisors and communication practitioners seeking to meet employees' growing expectations for a healthy work environment in today's post-pandemic era.

Although the literature has established organizational leadership as a vital determinant for a healthy workforce, few studies have explored leaders' health-specific communication to enhance employee health. This study is the first to conceptualize health-oriented leadership communication at dual hierarchical levels and uncover its influence on employees. The results suggested the importance of health-oriented leadership communication across hierarchical levels in building a healthy workplace.

The purpose of this study is to better understand social media (SM) factors that physician leaders need to consider, as they adapt their cross-boundary practices to engage with colleagues and patients. Firstly, this study explores why SM is being used by physicians to cross horizontal (physician to physician) and stakeholder (physician to patient) boundaries prior to COVID-19. Secondly, based on the studies reviewed, this study provides insights on the practical SM implications for physician leaders working in the COVID-19 environment to actively enhance their practices, reduce public confusion and improve patient care, thus informing health-care practices.

A systematic literature review was used to conduct a structured transparent overview of peer reviewed articles that describe physicians’ use of cross-boundary SM across several disciplines (e.g. health, information science). As a baseline assessment prior to COVID-19, the review synthesized 47 articles, identified and selected from six databases and Novanet. This study used NVivo 12 to thematical code the articles, leading to the emergence of four broad factors that influence SM use.

A key reason noted in the literature for physicians use of SM to cross horizontal boundaries is to share knowledge. Regarding stakeholder boundaries, the most cited reasons are to improve patient’s health and encourage behavioural changes. Insights garnered on the practical SM implications include the need for physicians to be stronger leaders in presenting trustworthy and consistent facts about health information to the public and fellow peers. As role models for the effective use of SM tools, physician leaders can mentor and coach their colleagues and counterparts.

As this was a literature review, the authors did not collect primary data to further explore this rapidly changing and dynamic SM world. Next steps could include a survey to determine firstly, how physicians currently use SM in this COVID-19 environment, and secondly, how they could leverage it for their work. Findings from this survey will help us better understand the role of physician leaders as health-care influencers and how they could better create trust and inform the Canadian public in the health information that is being conveyed.

Physician leaders can play a key role in positively influencing institutional support for ethical and safe SM use and engagement practices. Physicians need to participate in developing regulations and guidelines that are fundamentally to physician leader’s SM use. Central to this research would be the need to understand how physicians cross-boundary practices have changed during and potentially post COVID-19. Physician leaders also need to monitor information sources for credibility and ensure that these sources are protected. As role models for the effective use of SM tools, physician leaders can mentor and coach their colleagues and counterparts in this area.

Although there have been studies of how physicians use SM, fewer studies explore why physician leaders’ cross boundaries (horizontal and stakeholder) using SM. Important insights are gained in physician leaders practical use of SM. Key themes that emerged included: organizational and individual, information, professional and regulations and guideline factors. These factors strengthen physician leaders understanding of areas of foci to enhance their cross-boundary interactions. There is an urgency to study the complexity of SM and the effectiveness of regulations and guidelines for physicians, who are being required, at an accelerated rate, to strengthen and increase their cross-boundary practices.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a disruptive effect on the health system. Health facility leaders were at the forefront of maintaining service delivery and were exposed to varied stressors in the early phase of the pandemic. This study aims to explore the leadership experiences of health facility leaders during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria’s epicentre.

This study conducted an exploratory descriptive qualitative study. To achieve this, 33 health facility leaders of different cadres across primary, secondary, and tertiary levels of the public health care system in Lagos, Nigeria, were remotely interviewed. The key informant interviews were transcribed verbatim and were analysed by using thematic analysis.

The health facility leaders experienced heightened levels of fear, anxiety and stressors during the early phase of the pandemic. They also had genuine concerns about exposing their family members to the virus and had to manage some health-care workers who were afraid for their lives and reluctant. Coping mechanisms included psychological and social support, innovative hygiene measures at health facility and at home, training and staff welfare in more ways than usual. They were motivated to continue rendering services during the crisis because of their passion, their calling, the Hippocratic oath and support from the State government.

The experiences of health facility leaders from different parts of the world have been documented. However, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first studies that specifically report multi-layer leadership experiences of health facility leaders during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa.

Social Network Analysis has been posited as a useful technique to determine if leadership development programs are an effective intervention in developing social ties and enhancing connectivity among leaders in an organization. Evaluations can examine the extent to which the leadership development programs create and catalyze peer networks. This study used Social Network Analysis to evaluate the development of a peer leadership network and resulting relationships among leaders participating in a leadership development program. Several predictions were made about the development of participants’ task, career, and social networks, generally predicting enhanced “esprit de corps” with their peer leaders over time. Thirty top executives in local public health were selected to participate in a 12-month national leadership development training program. Peer network development was documented at three time points across the programmatic year at 6-month intervals. The results demonstrated that while leaders’ social networks increased over time, friendship networks increased more slowly than did acquaintance networks. The task-related networks involving interactions to solve problems, and career networks for seeking advice and support increased over time, with task-related and advice-related networks stabilizing by the end of the second workshop. Implications for developing peer leadership networks are discussed.

The authors would like to acknowledge the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the National Association for County and City Health Officials and for their support of this research.

This paper aims to examine the views of physicians in senior management positions regarding the distinctive characteristics and roles of leaders in the Israeli health-care system and what might be the interactions between management and leadership.

In total, 13 semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with physicians in senior management positions. Interviews were recorded, transcribed and analyzed using the qualitative-phenomenological method.

Interviewees discerned leaders as exhibiting traits of transformational leadership and managers, as expressing characteristics of transactional leadership. Most interviewees asserted that physicians should act as social leaders promoting public health and equality in health care, beyond their clinical practice. They agreed that physicians should fill most senior positions in the health-care system, provided they undergo appropriate training in management, leadership and interdisciplinary collaboration.

Interviewees revealed gaps between the aspiration to lead, perceptions of physicians as leaders and what occurs in reality: physicians wish to assume leadership roles in the health-care system and emphasize the qualities of transformative leadership, but medical education does not include leadership training. Therefore, there is a need to develop training programs for physicians in management and leadership. There is also a need to integrate physicians from various communities to promote local leadership in the health-care field and to reduce disparities. The consideration of health-care leadership is especially applicable in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has placed the question of leadership within and outside of the medical community in a broader social context.

Emphasis on quality and reducing costs has led many health-care organizations to reconfigure their management, process, and quality control infrastructures. Many are lean, a management philosophy with roots in manufacturing industries that emphasizes elimination of waste. Successful lean implementation requires systemic change and strong leadership. Despite the importance of leadership to successful lean implementation, few researchers have probed the question of ideal leadership attributes to achieve lean thinking in health care. The purpose of this paper is to provide insight into applicable attributes for lean leaders in health care.

The authors systematically reviewed the literature on principles of leadership and, using Dombrowski and Mielke’s (2013) conceptual model of lean leadership, developed a parallel theoretical model for lean leadership in health care.

This work contributes to the development of a new framework for describing leadership attributes within lean management of health care.

The summary of attributes can provide a model for health-care leaders to apply lean in their organizations.