Psychologist Leadership on Inpatient Rehabilitation Teams: Organizational Science in Practice

Purpose/Objective: Teams are a critical part of modern health care, particularly in rehabilitation settings where multiple providers with different backgrounds and training work toward common goals. Rehabilitation psychologists have a legacy of providing leadership and influence for complex teams. Knowledge of interdisciplinary/transdisciplinary systems, leadership within those systems, and consultation across disciplines are foundational competencies for rehabilitation psychologists. Research Method/Design: This paper summarizes the different roles rehabilitation psychologists serve on health care teams and identifies opportunities for improved effectiveness. An overview of leadership theory over time is provided. Results: Even when psychologists are not formal team leaders, opportunities exist to leverage team member strengths and encourage the development of leader behaviors across the team in support of good patient care. Conclusions/Implications: Drawing from the management and organizational development literature, evidence-based suggestions are provided for rehabilitation psychologists seeking to foster healthy team dynamics within and among health care teams. The authors encourage rehabilitation psychologists to use their unique training to facilitate shared leadership on teams that foster and encourage a climate of trust, psychological safety, healthy and productive conflict, along with strong communication practices. These issues became even more salient as teams transitioned to virtual platforms during the pandemic and continue to adapt to hybrid work environments. Impact and Implications This paper integrates management and organizational behavior theory with rehabilitation psychology competencies to offer evidence-based suggestions for enhancing leadership behaviors on health care teams. This is one of the first papers to highlight the potential leadership strategies rehabilitation psychologists can employ on transdisciplinary teams, which consist of highly educated and skilled individuals who likely have different reporting structures. By leveraging their education, training, and integration of evidence-based practices, rehabilitation psychologists can aid in teams' incorporation of recommendations that will allow for healthy and productive processes and dissent in pursuit of excellence both within individual teams and across multiteam systems.