Setting Leadership Development Goals in Healthcare: Facility Guide

Leadership development goals are clear objectives designed to facilitate consistent improvement and growth. In dynamic fields like healthcare — where rapid technological advancements and shifting regulatory standards constantly reshape best practice — these efforts are essential to both personal and organizational success.

As a healthcare leader, you’re already equipped with many of the skills and qualities necessary for handling the challenges of your position. However, by setting quality goals for leadership development and ongoing growth, you’ll be better prepared to stay ahead of professional flux. Learn some of the best practices (with helpful examples) for drafting these improvement-minded objectives, so you can drive your organizational outlook and ensure resilience in the face of difficult change.

What Are the Benefits of Leadership Development in a Healthcare Setting?

At the heart of all healthcare innovation is the desire for better patient outcomes. Research has shown that effective leadership can drive higher quality care. It helps create a care environment associated with better clinical outcomes and improved staff engagement. As clinical settings rapidly shift alongside technological advancements, policy updates, and increasingly complex care requirements, leaders who commit to continual development are better able to guide their teams to success.

Leaders who continually develop their skillset and professionalism can also help positively influence:

• Patient outcomes and wellbeing
• Staff satisfaction and retention
• Facility financial performance
• Organizational strategies
• Change management

Crafting Goals for Leadership Development: Considerations

Patients benefit when leaders commit to cultivating their effectiveness through continued education, training, and practical experience. Before we get into some specific leadership development goals and examples, let’s consider the best practices for developing growth-minded leadership objectives.

1. Focus on the Healthcare Mission and Organizational Values

Leaders can help avoid unintentional mission drift (or loss of focus on an organization’s intended purpose) by prioritizing system-wide goals. This will help align departments with their umbrella organizations, streamlining operations and helping drive the realization of larger objectives.

Key takeaway: By focusing their developmental goals on the mission, leaders help reinforce institutional credibility and community standing.

2. Prioritize People-First Approaches for Patients and Staff

Patient and staff experiences rely on attitudes that reinforce person-centered care approaches and better working environments. Leadership goals that align with the psychosocial needs of their patients and staff can boost the quality of experience for both, improving outcomes across the board.

Key takeaway: Goals that observe systemwide experience-based challenges better position leaders to overcome those problems.

3. Incorporate the Latest Research Into Clinical Initiatives

When decisions are guided by evidence, the decision-making process is rooted in expert judgement and is more likely to yield positive impact. Goals should always help leaders continue to develop their skills at synthesizing and incorporating research (which is constantly evolving in healthcare).

Key takeaway: By focusing on continuous improvement through research-backed initiatives, leaders can help their organizations remain on the cutting edge of advanced care practices.

4. Use Patient Metric Data and Feedback as Fuel

Using data (from EHR sources or feedback surveys, for example) helps turn vague clinical challenges into actionable opportunities for innovation. By constantly learning how to better improve their data management and meaningful use, clinical leaders are able to highlight and effectively tackle key issues within the care environment.

Key takeaway: By developing their data-driven strategies, leaders ensure better regulatory compliance, protecting patient safety and the facility bottomline.

5. Anticipate Future Changes to Clinical Care

We’ve established that healthcare is a dynamic field. Leaders who continuously develop their skill at adapting alongside its evolution are able to direct effective transformation that harnesses new technologies and innovation to improve the care environment, giving them a competitive advantage.

Key takeaway: Leaders who work to proactively navigate change (rather than relying on reactive posturing) are able to effectively manage change, leading to improved productivity and efficiency.

What Are the Goals of Leadership Development for Healthcare Leaders?

The goals of leadership development are guided by the associated organizational values and priorities. We’ve established that better patient experiences should lie at the heart of most healthcare leader goals. However, the additional development-driven benefits to staff and financial performance should also play into goal considerations.

Knowing the wide-ranging advantages, leaders would be remiss in ignoring the more-specific question, What are leadership development goals? Objectives that are informed by best practice will have an easier time balancing the needs of the individual leader with those of the organization. For further clarification, let’s review some potential leadership development goals and action plan examples that align with our recommendations while using the SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, timely) goal strategy.

Looking for Expert-Backed Resources to Drive Your Innovation?

Whether you’re looking to craft long-term or short-term leadership development goals, examples like the five listed above will help you focus your objectives. Streamline the planning phases of additional quality improvement projects with IntelyCare’s expert-informed best practice recommendations and facility guides.