Understand professional management and leadership in health

1. Understand theories of management and leadership and their application to health and social care or children and young people settings. 1.1 McGregor’s X and y theory he argues that manager’s approach their staff with a set of basic assumptions. These include Theory X

which are that staff do not actually like to work, they only turn up for work because they need the money. Staff will not work hard and they will seek to avoid all responsibilty and personal initative. Staff will only work hard when they are cleary directed as to what to do and are continually monitored. Theory Y

People actually sense that work is as much a part of life as rest and recreation. Staff who enjoy their work will develop a loyalty to the organisation. Staff are not only able to accept responsibility but some staff actually want responsibility. Drawing on staff member’s own ideas and creativity can benefit the organisation. whilst these assumptions about staff have aspects that are caricatured or stereotyped there has been a a degree of acceptance that in large, mass production organisations theory X is more relevant, partly because theory Y is difficult to apply.

However theory Y is considered to be relevant to organisations where there is a commitment from staff to the organisations objectives. Where staff are able to apply direction and autonomy then they can work better than if they had been carrying out specific directed instuctions. In his sense theory Y calls on managers to consult with staff , maximise staff participation and support staff responsibilty . Within social care this should smoothly feed into support staff and senior support staff involving service users in planning the care they receive. 1.2

I believe that theory X is not always suitable within the care setting , as theory X management approaches tend to range from a hard approach which would not work within the care setting as this requires tight control of the environment , which can not be applied in a care setting as staff would be made to feel that they are always under close supervision. Which could result in poor performances from staff , there could be a lot of hostility on the floor therefore making it a very poor work setting . However the soft approach also would not be ideal as staff would only be working to reap rewards and therefore they would not be reaching their full potential in their job role. This management approach under theory X would probably be somewhere between the hard and soft approach , however McGregor asserts that neither of these approaches can be appropriate because the assumptions of theory X are not correct. Theory Y would be more suitable within the care setting