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Week 2: Lesson Personal Leadership Development
Self-Awareness
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Write My Essay For MeProbably one of the most difficult tasks is to become aware of one’s leadership qualities and character. Have you looked internally to consider personal motivators, fears and beliefs? In other words, do you really know who you are? Some use the analogy of peeling back the layers of an onion until you arrive at the core, or true you. Using the work of Bradberry & Greaves (2009), consider the following elements.
Know who and what pushes your buttons. First, you need to be honest; everyone has buttons that, when pushed, result in strong emotions and responses. Many times, these responses can be negative. Consider someone who is late for an appointment—AGAIN. When he or she finally arrives, you have already changed your mood and non-verbal behaviors.
Stop and Think
Recognize and acknowledge your emotions and then control them.
Don’t be fooled by a good mood or a bad mood. All individuals can experience a bad mood, and everyone can be overwhelmed by a good mood. In both situations, your mood can alter the lens through which you see a situation. For example, in the cafeteria, you see a colleague place a bag of chips into his or her pocket and walk out without paying for it. Because of your bad mood, you stop the person in the hall and begin to lecture them about honesty and integrity. When you finally stop for a minute, the colleague states that the chips were paid for as he or she walked into the cafeteria.
Stop and Think
When it comes to decision-making or quick reactions, be careful of the bad and good moods; decisions and actions can occur that will be regretted. Develop self-awareness of your emotional state and its potential impact upon your responses.
Using the above strategy of knowing your mood as noted by Bradberry & Greaves (2009) will help in developing self-awareness. Self-awareness will help to foster authentic leadership which comes from the person that you are.
A Key Self-Assessment Question
Do you walk your talk?
Manage Themselves
Management is a term that can be applied to both work-related events and personal ones. At work, a leader needs to manage, which means to focus, plan, schedule, organize, implement, and evaluate outcomes. A first-time manager soon realizes that he or she is responsible for getting the work done through the efforts of others rather than solely by himself or herself. In response to this realization, many managers overpower their direct reports with their knowledge and experience.
Take a step back and consider team leadership. While additional information on team leadership will be presented later in the course, for now, consider the following:
- Believe in your team.
- Be trustworthy.
- Lead with a purpose/vision.
- Make the team feel safe.
Remember to lead the team with your heart (i.e. caring, feelings) and with your head (i.e. objectivity, knowledge).
For personal management, the first person that you lead is yourself (Maxwell, 1999). You are responsible for your own preferences. This may require managing everything from emotions to balancing time. For your emotions, notice your behavior and get in touch with your feelings. You need to learn to correctly identify the emotions, but remember, do not allow emotions to control. During conversations, especially difficult conversations, emotions can be strong. These strong emotions can cause the message that you want to send to either be lost or misunderstood. When you develop an awareness of your emotions and actions, you can then actively select what you will say and do.
Don’t hide emotions, but don’t let them control you; don’t lash out!
Take a Moment to Reflect on Leadership
As noted by S. Covey (2004), management is putting first things first. While this has clear implications for managing one’s own time and resources, how does it apply to leadership?
Demonstrate Character/Ethics
It is interesting that in the work of John Maxwell (1999), 21 qualities of a leader were noted, and the first quality was character. But what is character? Character demonstrates the traits and values that are present within each individual. Your character is your choice. Character determines who you are and the leader that people around you will see.
Ability to delegate—A leader cannot accomplish the goal alone
Communication—Listening and talking
Competence—Knowledge and skill, but not arrogance
Courage—Needed to question previous decisions and to make decisions, especially when you are in the minority
Humility—Acknowledging the contribution of everyone
Humor—Mistakes will happen
Integrity—Needed to develop trust and collaborative relationships Positive attitude—Believing in the mission/goal
Proactive—Looking ahead to prevent or solve problems yet to occur Respectful—Acknowledging the uniqueness and contribution of individuals
Teachability—Learning more and more; always learning
Take a Moment to Reflect on Leadership
Based on the previous list and your personal leadership style, what two characteristics would you add?
While there are many elements or qualities to character, ethical behavior continues as a vital component. Ethics and leadership are linked together. Consider recent news stories regarding unethical behaviors by leaders and the far-reaching impact upon others. A simple but accurate definition of ethical behavior is to know and do what is right. The challenge is to determine what is right because right is influenced by many elements, including culture, religion, and personal preferences. Ethical leadership has three components.
Ethical-decision making: to consider the consequences of decisions (and actions) upon individuals.
Ethical leading: to direct projects, departments, and the organization toward ethical outcomes; and
Ethical role modeling: to demonstrate ethical behaviors within the organization, as well as in the community.
Outcomes of demonstrating ethical leadership would include:
- establishing trust and credibility;
- fostering collaboration since people prefer ethical leaders; and
- creating a positive work environment or culture.
To foster a culture of ethics within a group or organization, ethical behavior and decision-making should be a topic of discussion with open and frank conversations of what is and is not ethical.
How do you develop as an ethical leader? The first element is to examine your own behaviors and values. This helps to identify any biases. Second, the leader needs to accept the responsibility for the outcome/consequences of actions upon others and yourself. Don’t overlook the reality that ethical leaders also need moral courage to confront unethical behaviors in others.
While there are many ways to consider ethical decision-making, the following model presented by Lassiter (2004) is very useful.
- Consider the consequences of a decision (e.g., Who will be helped? Who will be harmed?).
- Analyze actions (e.g., are the proposed actions honest and equitable?).
- Make the decision.
Take a Moment to Reflect on Leadership
It has been suggested that the larger the organization, the easier it is to stretch standards? What do you think?
Remember This
Are you the same person in public that you are in private?
Develop Themselves
This course strongly presents the premise that leadership skills can be learned. As a leader, you must be open to change, including personal change. So, how can you develop leadership skills? Consider the following suggestions.
Use initiative to act on opportunities
At any level of employment, there are opportunities to learn and demonstrate leadership. Organizations are frequently looking for interested individuals to lead projects or chair committees. In these small groups, leadership characteristics can be demonstrated, as well as the ability to complete tasks. In other words, you are learning leadership by demonstrating leadership on small
projects initially.
Demonstrate leadership characteristics
One of the priority characteristics to develop is that of communication. Going beyond conversation, communication includes listening and body language. Along with communication, demonstrating integrity is of vital importance. Your attitude should show a genuine passion or enthusiasm. Even if you disagree with feedback, always be willing to learn. Serving as a role model by being a preceptor/mentor for a new employee is an excellent way to demonstrate your developing leadership skills.
Be a valuable team member
Increasingly, organizations are committed to developing the next generation of leaders from their current employees. To be considered for leadership roles, become a valuable team member. Learning to motivate others is one way to demonstrate your ability to lead others. Always show a “can-do attitude;” especially when problems or concerns are occurring. Be willing to help solve problems and even prevent problems when possible.
Learn
Lastly, you need to be a learner! Determine your current leadership style. What are its strengths? What are its weaknesses? How can you change weaknesses to strengths? Don’t overlook the need to conduct a self-assessment. What leadership characteristics do you currently have? Which characteristics are you interested in learning? Remember, many organizations provide leadership classes; actively participate in these. Always apply the information that you have learned by trying new techniques.
Take a Moment to Reflect on Leadership
Maxwell (1999) noted that leaders cannot rise above limitations of their character. Do you think that this is true? For example, if a leader has a character of wanting more things such as houses or cars or paintings, will this have an adverse impact upon their leadership style and achievement of goals? If a leader needs to be the center of attention and fails to acknowledge others who helped attained a goal, would this impact colleagues and future goal projects?
Principles for Leadership
When considering leadership characteristics, the principles of leadership must be contemplated. Why? People or the leaders make the principles reality. While there are numerous principles regarding leadership, the following will be discussed.
Wholes are not just the sum of their parts
For too long, departments or units functioned as silos, not realizing their contribution to the entire organization or system. With the newer systems theory, an organization, while being composed of parts/departments, is greater than the sum of the parts. Why? Interactions/interfaces/integration result in a synergy and fluidity. Why is this important to leadership? No longer can a leader be responsible for only his or her department. Rather, collaboration among areas, professions, and individuals is needed to drive the system forward. A leader must establish both vertical and horizontal relationships.
Diversity is essential to life
If a system is homogenous, then diversity in ideas and thoughts will be missing. Yes, diversity will lead to conflicts and even chaos, but the modern leader needs to respond by acknowledging the differences and seeking the path through the differences. Instead of seeing conflict, the leader needs to perceive challenges, and challenges can produce energy. It is through dialogue, using communication skills, that ethical decision-making can occur to focus the direction that the organization is to move toward.
Error is essential to success
Especially within healthcare, there is an evolving attitude toward errors. Often referred to as a just culture, it is a realization that people can and do make mistakes. The focus is on improving the system, especially the processes at the core of the mistake. This is why errors could be seen as being essential to success, because improvements occur. For leaders, an environment of trust needs to be present so that an individual at the point of service is able to raise his/her hand to identify either a mistake made or the potential for a mistake. The actual error or potential error now becomes a means for change, rather than disciplinary action. But this can only occur if leaders are willing to foster the environment where the only acceptable error is the error that is repeated.
Summary
No matter which leadership theory one uses or which leadership book one reads, the need to develop self is noted. With the onset of transformational leadership, there is growing recognition of how the leader directly impacts situations. This impact can be positive, or it could be negative. For the work environment to be positive, the leader must demonstrate caring, being, and doing for oneself as well as colleagues. Demonstrating these qualities is a journey of learning leadership
