Abstract
Leadership attitudes are beliefs and feelings that largely determine how people perceive their work environment, and individuals’ attitudes will eventually lead to behaviours and actions. Positive leadership attitudes are key to keeping a positive staff morale. Operational managers require positive leadership attitudes to gain good organisational management skills. Operational managers should also possess positive leadership attitudes when making decisions and be confident so that it is easier for subordinates to trust the leader. Pandemics require operational managers to be well-informed to make effective decisions. Operational managers are expected to demonstrate calm and guide the organisation during times of crisis. Therefore, they need to learn to navigate the unknown and gain new attitudes to lead an organisation and enhance the work environment during a pandemic.
The purpose of this study was to explore and describe operational managers’ leadership attitudes post the Covid-19 pandemic in the City of Johannesburg metropolitan PHC clinics and formulate recommendations to enhance and sustain positive leadership attitudes among operational managers. A qualitative, explorative, descriptive and contextual research design was used to explore and describe operational managers’ leadership attitudes post Covid-19 in PHC clinics. The target population was 45 operational managers who were in management positions during the Covid-19 pandemic. Data were collected using indepth phenomenological interviews, field notes were taken in support of the data, and interviews were audio recorded with participants’ permission. The data were saturated during the eighth interview, but two more interviews were conducted to confirm data saturation before the analysis was performed using Colaizzi’s descriptive phenomenological method. An independent coder confirmed the findings.
Ethical considerations and strategies to promote the study’s trustworthiness were applied throughout the research process to ensure the study’s credibility and protect participants. The study’s findings revealed three themes: participants experienced positive leadership attitude elements, participants experienced barriers to positive leadership attitudes, and participants mentioned strategies to enhance and sustain positive leadership attitudes. This study revealed that operational managers remained positive post Covid-19 pandemic, but the researcher also provided several recommendations to enhance and sustain their positive leadership attitudes.