Understanding Leading a Multidisciplinary Team

Abstract

Leadership is important. Leadership is especially important in the swiftly shifting and changing context of healthcare. Clinicians are increasingly charged with working together in seamless ways to support the health and wellbeing of their clients/patients. There is a developing interest in understanding co-working within multidisciplinary teams in the health environment and leadership is a necessary activity in bringing together disparate clinicians to work together for the betterment of their clients/patients. Clinical leadership could be the method for this connection. Acknowledging clinical leadership and coworking are important in the health environments, some university health services and counselling services have developed co-working models that appear to be effective in leading clinicians’ in an effective co-working model. However, where there is a depth of literature on clinical leadership in the medical profession, there is a dearth of the same within the counselling profession. As a counsellor and a leader I wish to understand how counselling leaders can contribute to multidisciplinary teams. This literature review is undertaken with constructionist eyes and an interpretive worldview and the literature reviewed was focussed upon: leadership, leadership and management, clinical leadership and counselling leadership. The key finding from the literature review is that counselling as a profession could advance a research interest in counselling leadership that is contextualised within the health environment and, develop an understanding of how counsellors can contribute, as clinical leaders, in the ever changing health environment.