Federal Health Care Leadership Skills Required in the 21st Century

Abstract

The purpose of the current study was to identify and describe the skills required of future health care leaders in the U.S. Department of Defense, Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Department of Health and Human Services. The identified skills should also be relevant to leaders of nonfederal agencies or nonmedical disciplines, such as education, human services, and similar public sector‐oriented disciplines, where the leaders are challenged to engage with a multitude of local, state, federal, and not‐for‐profit entities. The study employed a focus group methodology during a 2‐day leadership summit. The participants were 47 senior health care leaders representing various federal agencies and the private sector. During facilitator‐guided sessions, six focus groups consisting of seven or eight randomly selected participants identified 165 skills that are required of leaders. Subsequent to the summit, content analysis was used to group the skills into 12 overarching skill sets. The 12 skill sets were the ability to build partnerships, develop trust, thrive in complex and ambiguous environments, listen actively, think with agility, create conditions for success, assert aspirational future‐based leadership, develop present moment awareness, create an interagency learning network, develop network leadership, develop network goal setting, and maintain resilience. It appeared that only the first six skills were noted in the literature. Further research is recommended to validate the findings including further investigation into the leadership competencies that are most effective at driving health and non health outcomes in communities.

Leading Networks Effectively: Literature Review and Propositions

“…Based on the history and development of leadership theories, networks differ in the degree to which they share their “leadership function.” Leadership was previously described as being present in or as networks (Carter et al, 2015; Contractor, DeChurch, Carson, Carter, & Keegan, 2012; van Wart, 2014). A stream of research was based on the proposition that network leadership is executed by a focal leader (Carter & DeChurch, 2012; Gronn, 2015), who may choose to distribute certain leadership roles or tasks (Hudak, Russell, Fung, & Rosenkrans, 2015). Hence, leadership in a network refers to the presence of a focal leader.…”

“…This may give the impression that a network's context or its desired outcomes are a given fact. Networks, however, are not static entities (Hudak et al, 2015). They emerge, develop, and may grow or cease over time.…”

Leadership skills essential in the value-based care era

“…The category of leading a change of movement when transitioning to VBCD that emerged in this study was consistent with the literature describing a federal health-care agency leader of the 21st century. Hudak et al (2015) postulated that traditional principles of leadership were no longer effective for aligning all fronts of a federal HCO in the 21st century.…”

Leadership competencies for the 21st century: a review from the Western world literature

“…First, a growth of recent research on leadership has added to a profusion of research without establishing a coherent agreement on the competencies required for the period (Karaaslan, 2015). Second, new research on the leadership competencies for the twenty-first century tackles the issue from a specific industry or context perspective without providing a broader vision (Hudak et al, 2015;Guzm an et al, 2020). Third, the suggested number of leadership competencies required for the twenty-first century varies between authors, ranging from only 6 (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2016) to more than 12 (Chung-Herrera et al, 2003).…”