Public health leaders in Lithuania: Do we have them? Do ee need them?

Abstract

Objectives To evaluate self-reported leadership competencies of public health executives in Lithuania. Methods The data was collected in a cross-sectional study, in 2015. Questionnaires were distributed to all executives of Lithuanian public health institutions and heads of municipality health administrations (N = 180). Response rate – 55%. Respondents were asked to answer to three sets of questions: LEPHIE project competency framework for an effective leadership in public health area (Czabanowska, 2013); Leadership Practice Inventory (Kouzes & Posner, 2003) and Emotion and Social Competency Questionnaire (Boyatzis, 2007). Results Findings suggest, that respondents evaluated their competencies positively, but estimated that they required a higher level of competence than they currently possessed. However, they showed that level of these competences should be higher for their current job position. Maximum and mean and standard deviation scores for the current and required level of competencies are the as following: systems thinking (35; 24.75 ± 4.85 vs 30.88 ± 4.51); political leadership (40; 27.46 ± 60.5 vs 35.62 ± 5.02); collaborative leadership – building and leading interdisciplinary teams (25; 17.73 ± 3.87 vs 22.00 ± 3.47). The most expressed emotional intelligence competences among respondents were from the Selfmanagement and Relationship Management competences groups. Model the way was the dominant leadership practice (52.87 ± 5.05), while the Challenge the process (47.63 ± 7.95) and Inspire a shared vision (47.89 ± 8.20) were the least ones. Our study results revealed, that these public health leaders evaluated their leadership competencies as follows: good – 56.4%, moderate – 35.5%, and poor – 8.1%. Majority (90.3%) are willing to continue to develop their leadership competencies. Conclusions Lithuania had intensive reforms in public health sector organization and leaders development. Howe