Healthcare Managers/Executives/Administrators
OBJECTIVE To describe the transformational leadership traits identified by the top administrative person responsible for overall direction of a Home Health Care agency.
METHODOLOGY Sample involved 87 Home Health Care administrators in Wisconsin (97% female). The majority (58%) held B.A. degrees, and nearly all were Registered Nurses (99%). Respondents completed the LPI-Self and provided demographic information. Internal reliabilities for the LPI were .77 (Challenging), .88 (Inspiring), .70 (Enabling), .73 (Modeling), and .82 (Encouraging).
In this study, internal reliabilities at time one on the LPI self ranged from .46 (Modeling) to .84 (Encouraging) and at time two ranged from .74 (Modeling) to .89 (Inspiring). Reliabilities for the LPI-Observer at time one and two, for dyad partners, supervisors and peers, averaged .87, and ranged between .74 and .95.
KEY FINDINGS The respondents saw themselves as engaging in Enabling most often, followed by Challenging, Modeling, Encouraging and Inspiring. The size of the standard deviations for these leadership practices was ranked in the reverse order (i.e., with Inspiring having the greatest variance and Enabling the least). The author reports that these findings are similar to those of Dunham and Klafehn (1990) who used the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire in a study of hospital nurse executives.