Mindful Leadership in Interprofessional Teams

Abstract

In interprofessional health teams the need for coordinating leadership and the (dynamical) need for appropriate clinical expertise to come to the fore involves a tension between the traditional role of the team leader as authority figure and the collaborative leadership which enables individual team members to emerge as leaders in their area of expertise and to relinquish this leadership as needed. Complexity analysis points to an understanding of leadership as an emergent property of the team. We discuss how a framework of mindful leadership addresses the implications of this emergent leadership model, and how Appreciative Inquiry provides a structured process for examination of team vision, values and behaviour standards.