THE BAMBOO MODEL OF LEADERSHIP: A FRAMEWORK FOR ADDRESSING CONTEMPORARY LEARNING CHALLENGES IN EDUCATIONAL AND HEALTHCARE INSTITUTIONS

Abstract

The education and healthcare sectors are grappling with issues that usual management cannot handle and this fact has been very evident during COVID-19. Educational institutions remain shut for several months, thereby depriving children of their right to education, and medical centers were suffering from understaffing and exhaustion due to too many patients. A report has mentioned that there are still hundreds of millions of children who do not attend school, the number of teachers who leave their jobs is increasing and, in the near future, there will probably lack 13 million nurses in the world. Such factors require a leader to not only be adaptable but to also have been established with a strong value system and be tough when dealing with challenges. This chapter explains how the Bamboo Model of Leadership satisfies these requirements by three principles: flexibility (changing with the environment), rootedness (living according to one's values), and regrowth (coming back stronger after a crisis). Examples of cases from the two sectors show the manner in which adaptable strategies led to the improvement of digital learning and patient care, in which these improvements, besides being the core of the practices, also supported fairness and security, and the growth of the initiatives helped to lower the exhaustion of the staff.