9 Leadership Skills You'll Need as a Health Care Administrator  

Being a health care administrator involves directing a health care facility or organization’s operations. From meeting with physicians and investors to training staff and monitoring budgets, health care administrators carry out a wide range of duties on the job. These responsibilities are all part of improving a facility or organization’s efficiency, which can lead to higher-quality care for patients. A health care administrator must be a good leader, but how do you accomplish that? Developing the right skills is essential to build a health care administration career.

Leadership Skills in Health Care

From physicians and nurses to health care executives and administrators, leadership skills are essential. Some health care roles, including health care administration, require a greater emphasis on leadership skills than others. As a health care leader, you’ll be expected to manage staff, implement programs, and make decisions that affect the quality of care patients receive in your organization or facility. You might also have other responsibilities, depending on the size of the organization or facility. Building leadership skills is a vital part of handling all these responsibilities.

Examples of Leadership Skills

What are good leadership skills? Although your duties and responsibilities as a health care administrator may vary, certain leadership skills always come in handy depending on where you work. The following are some of the skills you should work on developing or improving if you plan to pursue a career in healthcare administration.

1. Integrity

Having integrity as a leader means that you’re trustworthy and honest. When you have integrity, you’re also reliable. Having integrity in leadership means you’re willing to admit to mistakes, follow through on commitments, practice what you preach, and improve as a leader.

2. Delegation

You’ll have many tasks and responsibilities as a health care administrator. Knowing how to delegate tasks helps ensure the company is successful by utilizing the strengths of team members. This involves identifying each team member's strengths and weaknesses, so you can delegate tasks accordingly.

3. Communication

Communicating with staff, health care providers, executives, investors, and other individuals is crucial to being a health care leader. Your communication skills should include being an active listener when others are speaking and being able to clearly communicate information to others verbally or in writing.

4. Agility

Having agility or flexibility in leadership is important since you’ll most likely need to adjust to changing situations. For example, you might need to shift your focus to an urgent matter rather than work on other projects as planned. Being agile or flexible means you can do this effectively while ensuring that all the work you’re responsible for is completed.

5. Empathy

Having empathy is an essential part of being a good leader. When you have empathy, you can relate to what others are feeling. As a health care administrator, you might need to display empathy when handling a conflict between staff members or when coming up with ways to ensure that patients in your organization or facility receive better care.

6. Team Building

Leadership means motivating others to cooperate or collaborate to accomplish goals. As a leader, this involves knowing the strengths and weaknesses of all team members, determining the best roles for them, and encouraging them to work together as a team. Doing so is an important part of keeping teams under your care working effectively so that projects and other tasks can be completed.

7. Critical Thinking

In healthcare administration, you can expect to make crucial decisions that affect the entire organization or facility. You might also need to make judgment calls and handle other complex issues. Critical thinking skills are essential for dealing with large-scale, urgent, or complicated decisions and problems in your workplace.

8. Decision-Making

Health care administrators are responsible for making many decisions as part of the job. This ranges from minor decisions, such as delegating the day’s tasks, to major decisions that influence patient care or other aspects of your facility or organization. As a health care administrator, you’ll need to be skilled at making informed decisions.

9. Problem-Solving

Finding solutions to problems or issues is part of healthcare administration. Whether you’re handling simple or complex issues, you should have the skills to do so confidently and efficiently.

Why Are Leadership Skills Important to Further Your Career?

As you move up in your career, you’ll be expected to take on more responsibilities, such as making large-scale decisions for a health care organization or training staff. You'll need to work on your leadership skills to improve your chance of achieving a leadership role as a health care administrator. Having these skills shows that you can handle these kinds of responsibilities effectively. Whether you already have several leadership skills or just a few, remember that you can always add to or improve your existing skills.

How to Develop or Improve Your Leadership Skills

Knowing how to improve leadership skills can help ensure you’re prepared for a career as a health care administrator. How can you work on developing or improving these skills? Use opportunities to put leadership skills into practice, such as working on active listening as part of your communication skills or focusing on critical thinking when you need to solve a problem or make decisions. Earning a degree in health care administration is a highly effective way to ensure you have the skills required for this career. These degree programs provide many opportunities to learn and develop leadership skills.

Earn Your Healthcare Administration Degree at CHCP

You have two options to become a health care administrator. The College of Health Care Professions (CHCP) offers an online and in-person Health and Medical Administrative Services Degree to help you learn the competencies and skills needed for a healthcare administrator career. This online or in-person degree program takes just 32 weeks to complete. Through this program, you’ll take classes in human resources management, business commutations, report writing, principles of management and leadership, communication skills, and more. Studying the foundations of business, psychology, and management principles helps you develop the knowledge and leadership skills you’ll need to be a successful health care administrator.

If you would like more information on our Associate of Applied Science in Health and Medical Administrative Services (HMAS) degree program, please contact CHCP. We offer this accelerated program for those who have already completed a healthcare certificate from CHCP or an accredited university or college.