Dimensions of Effective Leadership in healthcare institutions: A Vision for tomorrow
Adaptiveness is best in systems where elements/pieces are optimally connected. Too rigid connection causes obstructions and too loose a connection results in chaos. The challenge is to first observe and diagnose the latent socio-cultural perspective of society, and see how the target customer fits in there

INTRODUCTION
Leadership is a requirement for effectiveness of any organization at any time. In stressful periods, leadership may be the pivotal factor separating organizations that flourish from organizations that founder or sink The current business climate at most healthcare centers is extraordinarily stressful A new wind is blowing, a rather hostile wind that is changing the leadership climate in healthcare institutions throughout the world. The command and control style of leadership behavior is on its way out. Even the more current leadership architecture, desperately seeking to fuse competition and collaboration, seem destined to topple before the gusts of change. It is a time marked by two contradictory forces, interdependence and diversity, pulling in opposite directions. The tensions from these twin forces are rapidly rendering traditional leadership behaviors obsolete. We have little choice but to develop a new model of leadership – leadership more appropriate for coping with these contradictory forces and to survive and succeed in the turbulent healthcare environment of tomorrow.

It is a common belief at many healthcare institutions that if they provided quality healthcare to their patients, had sufficient resources, a sound management control, and a binding loyalty of their patients they had nothing to worry about. There could be nothing more wrong than this type of belief. Manfred Kets de Vries, the renowned management and psychology guru, has argued that even with all good intentions, plentiful resources, and supposedly good managerial control an organization needs

Key words: effective leadership, healthcare institutions, vision for future From the Department of Administrative Affairs, Hadi Clinic, Kuwait. Corresponding author: Dhirendra Verma, PhD, 703 Ratan Castle, 7/29-B Tilak Nagar, Kanpur-208 002, India (e-mail: dverma1@hotmail.com).

sound leadership in order to thrive. He states, quite succinctly: “Your business can have all the advantages in the world; strong financial resources, enviable market position, and state-of-the-art technology, but if leadership fails, all of these advantages melt away”(1). Although this statement applies to any type of business, nowhere does

it seems more appropriate than in a healthcare institution. Not only that, a healthcare institution, because of its very nature, needs a type of leadership that is multidimensional in nature and more attuned to face the challenges of tomorrow. This article attempts to envision the type of leadership style, with all its dimensions, which would be more effective and relevant to the needs of healthcare institutions in the foreseeable future.

LEADERSHIP DEFINED
Leadership is an elusive quality and its definition can vary with the times. In the past 50 years there have been as many as 65 classification systems developed to define the dimensions of leadership (2). One such classification system is the scheme proposed by Bass (3). He suggested that some definitions view leadership as the focus of group processes. From this perspective the leader is at the center of group change and activity, and embodies the will of the group. Another group of definitions conceptualizes leadership from a personality perspective, which suggests that leadership is a combination of special traits or characteristics that individuals possess and that enable them to induce others to accomplish tasks (4). Other approaches to leadership have defined it as an act or behavior—the things leader do to bring about change in a group (5).

In addition, leadership has been defined in terms of the power relationship that exists between leaders and followers (6). From this viewpoint, leaders have power and wield it to effect changes in others. Still others view leadership as an instrument of goal achievement in helping group members achieve their goals and meet their need (7). This view includes leadership that transforms followers through vision setting, role modeling, and individualized attention.

Despite the multitude of ways that leadership has been conceptualized, several components can be identified as central to the phenomenon of leadership. They are (a) leadership is a process, (b) leadership involves influence, (c) leadership occurs within a group context, and (d) leadership involves goal attainment. Based on these components, the following definition of leadership will be used in this article: Leadership is a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal

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