Leadership at Windber a Study

Leadership at Windber

A Study in Leadership:

The Case of Windber

The case study presented here, referring to the Medical Facility Windber, is an example of a great success in a not-so-great economy, which is attributed to the facility's president F. Nicholas Jacobs. As can be seen from the case study, Mr. Jacobs, who takes over Windber when the facility is in a deplorable state, with, as the case study well describes, "industrial pink painted" walls, "circa 1970 furniture," and "snow leaking through the windows of the conference room," manages to turn the facility into a thriving, even booming place of business that brings in half a million dollars annually.

The work done by Mr. Jacobs is a testament to his abilities, his leadership, the way he treats co-workers, but also his ambition to prevent the facility from closing its doors and thereby effectively turn it around. In order to achieve his goal, Jacobs, as the case study further mentions, interviews employees, finds out what the community wants from the center, and implements a set of policies meant to drive up revenue and drive down costs, while also updating the facilities. The president does quite a lot of research, as evidenced by the document, and even interview people in the community.

Jacobs thus finally realizes that octogenarians make up a large percentage of the population in the city and they are the ones who must utilize the hospital facilities. Thus, he makes it a priority to improve their quality of life and sets his vision forth in a community center that, as the case study states, "would allow members of the community to exercise in a state-of-the-art facility while having access to professionals to answer health-related questions." It is through this shrewd philosophy that Jacobs can achieve his goal and turn the new preventative-care philosophy in income-generating results.

With the full description given above of the fantastic turnaround of a small medical community, the paper will now aim to answer the following points:

1. How factors of situation leadership theories can be applied to Jacobs and Windber.

2. How Jacobs would score on the least-preferred-co-worker scale and why.

3. What the range of the overall situational favorability would be for Jacobs, based on the success of Windber.

First, according to the leadership theory model, there is no best style of leadership, and the effectiveness of leadership should be measured through a leader's maturity level, for example, as well as through his ability to take responsibility, and his previous experience. Of course, Jacobs would have to be a mature leader, as he most likely has adapted his style to make the organization successful. On the scale, however, he could also be qualified as an S2 individual, especially in the earlier stages of the project, who gave high directive and high support to his employees. Furthermore, from the specifics given in the case study, it is clear that Jacobs would be a selling leader and/or a participating leader, due to the various stages of the project. Because of his status, Jacobs could not be a low relationship leader and thus does not qualify as telling or delegating.

According to the table developed by Fiedler on the least preferred co-worker (rendered below), Jacobs would most likely have an effective leader quality, rather than leader position of power.

Thus, he would have good leader-member relations, may be unstructured, but would certainly score highly on the most effective leader column. However, the least-preferred co-worker scale also shows high and low motivation hierarchies. In terms of these, high-LPC leaders are motivated from relationships, and given Jacobs necessity to speak to people in the hospital and in the neighborhood in order to get attention and success, he would most likely be at a high-LPC level.