The quantum skills model in management: a new paradigm to enhance effective leadership

Abstract

The traditional management skills of planning, organizing, directing and controlling are inadequate in the fast‐paced, constantly changing, highly complex world of twenty‐first century organizations. This article uses concepts from quantum mechanics and chaos theory as metaphors for a new management skill set that can enable managers to actualize more of their leadership potential. The seven quantum skills are ancient and futuristic, scientific and spiritual, simple and complex. Together they form a model that balances the traditional left‐brain management skills with new skills that more fully utilize both hemispheres of the brain. As managers master these skills, they transcend the limitations of mechanistic, deterministic, reductionistic thinking and become authentic change masters, changing themselves and their organizations at depth.

Collaborative leadership model in the management of health care

“…Embertson (2006) relates that traditional organizational structure within a health care environment extends command and control from senior-level managers, through the positions of middle and first-line managers, to individual employees. By employing this constant Newtonian linear strategy (i.e., wire diagrams, organization charts, linear command relationship trees, among other types of relationship establishment tools), organizations fall victim to a 300-year-old mechanistic, deterministic, and reductionist view of organizational leadership (Shelton and Darling, 2001). To facilitate change, health care organizations should begin to evaluate defined management roles outside of traditional parameters.…”

Enhancing Entrepreneurial Leadership: A Focus on Key Communication Priorities

“…Since planning, organizing, directing and controlling are derivatives of classical management thought, this new paradigm of communication priorities provides meaningful insights into an organizational world that is objective and subjective, logical and irrational, linear and nonlinear, and orderly and chaotic. In short, this paradigm of communication priorities challenges entrepreneurs to turn their view of reality upside down and inside out, and acknowledge that there is much more to their effective leadership than has been considered in the past paradigms of organizational communication (Shelton and Darling, 2001).…”

Public health leadership in primary care practice in England: Everybody's business?

“…Whilst this is the case internationally, this article focuses its arguments by analysing the concept of leadership in relation to the UK Government's current approach to 'modernizing' the NHS. It draws on Shelton and Darling's (2001) 'quantum skills' model to suggest new ways in which public health leadership in a primary care context might be approached.…”

“…It looks at leadership in policy, theory and practice, and draws attention to a number of key challenges along the leadership path. The concept of 'leadership skills' as a taught competence is questioned, and Shelton and Darling's (2001) 'quantum skills' model of leadership is provided to suggest new ways in which public health leadership in a primary care context might be approached. Whilst this article focuses on public health and primary care in England, the complexity of primary care settings and public health delivery in other international contexts extends its relevance to non-UK settings.…”