Discussion 2: Your Leadership Profile

Discussion 2: Your Leadership Profile

Sample Answer for Discussion 2: Your Leadership Profile Included After Question

Discussion 2: Your Leadership Profile

Do you believe you have the traits to be an effective leader? Perhaps you are already in a supervisory role, but as has been discussed previously, appointment does not guarantee leadership skills.

How can you evaluate your own leadership skills and behaviors? You can start by analyzing your performance in specific areas of leadership. In this Discussion, you will complete Gallup’s StrengthsFinder assessment. This assessment will identify your personal strengths, which have been shown to improve motivation, engagement, and academic self-conference. Through this assessment, you will discover your top five themes—which you can reflect upon and use to leverage your talents for optimal success and examine how the results relate to your leadership traits.

A Sample Answer For the Assignment: Discussion 2: Your Leadership Profile

Title: Discussion 2: Your Leadership Profile

My top themes from the GerfranceMetelus-Benjamin assessment are restorative, strategic, learner, includer, and connectedness. The results demonstrate a lot of my characteristics and leadership qualities. For example, the restorative reflects my quality as a strategic thinker. When something happens, even in my line of practice, I focus on analyzing the factors and variables to find solutions to problems (Rasa, 2020). The assessment also illuminates some of my core values, strengths, and characteristics. First, the two strengths are appreciation of feedback and the desire to acquire new knowledge and skills. I believe in the value of feedback in encouraging improvement. I am always striving to better my skills and knowledge. And thus, seek evaluation of skills and embrace every feedback, whether positive or negative, which I use for improvement. Additionally, I engage in self-driven learning opportunities because new knowledge and skills give me the power to explore great opportunities.

Personal core values from the assessment are empowerment, patience, and persistence. I believe we grow by uplifting each other, and that is why I take every opportunity I get to empower other people. I tend to see potential in everyone and use my skills and knowledge to empower. I also believe in learning from people by sharing knowledge, theories, and practice insights. Similarly, success in leadership does not come easy; patience and persistence are my philosophy for success (Ayeleke et al., 2018). As a charge nurse in a psychiatric hospital, I practice these values almost everyday, given the complex and demanding nature of the clinical environment. I also encourage novice nurses under me to embrace patience and persistence if they want to succeed.

Some of the characteristics that emerged from the assessment are an innovative thinker and decisive. I am strategic in my leadership approach, which requires innovative ideas to develop solutions to existing and emerging problems in the practice environment. Similarly, I am strong-willed, and I prefer to make quick and effective decisions (Weintraub & McKee, 2019). I look for what needs fixing and quickly comeup with a solution no matter how challenging the situation may seem. These qualities have enabled me to demonstrate effective leadership even as I still strive to enhance my leadership skills.

 

References

Ayeleke, R. O., Dunham, A., North, N., & Wallis, K. (2018). The Concept of Leadership in the Health Care Sector. Leadership, https://doi.10.5772/intechopen.76133.

Rasa, J. (2020). Developing effective health leaders: the critical elements for success. Journal of Hospital Management and Health Policy, 4, https://jhmhp.amegroups.com/article/view/5595/html.

Weintraub, P., & McKee, M. (2019). Leadership for Innovation in Healthcare: An Exploration. International journal of health policy and management, 8(3), 138–144. https://doi.org/10.15171/ijhpm.2018.122.

Introduction

Advance-practice nursing is a pursuit of betterment built upon a foundation of humanism.  Self-reflection is imperative to understand oneself if the goal is to help others build upon their strengths. The Clifton Strength Finder 2.0 is a valuable tool to hone in on strengths that give meaning to our lives and professional roles. Strengths can be leveraged when understood. This discussion will analyze the top 5 strengths to formulate actionable goals.

Top 5 Strengths

The Clifton assessment revealed my top 5 strengths as Learner, Achiever, Input, Self-Assurance, and Connectedness. Learner seemed self-evident in my current scholastic endeavors. The insight guide brought awareness to a deeper theme of the need to examine why things go wrong (Rath, 2021, p. 25). A strong internal locus of control always has been an inherent quality. This has served me well in becoming an achiever in my personal and professional life. A steadfast belief that I can identify modifiable variables in life to adapt more readily to change and entropy in the future is powerful. Just as we teach patients, they can change their health through lifestyle changes. A scholarly article by Dagasan et al. (2023) emphasizes the need for internal locus of control in healthcare’s total quality management leaders. The scholars find that an internal locus of control promotes autonomy and meaningfulness in their work, directly correlating with the strength of Learner. Self-Assurance is a product of Learner. The core of Self-Assurance is the ability to see the world’s objective reality and be decisive in how to respond. The validity of Self-Assurance is earned through Learner not to be conflated with overconfidence or arrogance (Rath, 2021, p. 147).

Input is congruent with Learner as desire to know more. The nuanced layer of Learner is the hunt to find fruitful discussions with other professionals and seek out mentors (Rath, 2021, p. 115). Achiever is the fuel that propels the Learner. Expecting the best of oneself is the mission of Achiever. Task completion is the reward, and awareness of the political, cultural, and societal landscape is always top of mind (Rath, 2021, p. 25). Intolerance for those not reaching their potential can sometimes be frustrating.

The levity of Connectedness can balance the pitfalls of Achiever and Self-Assurance. A genuine interest in understanding what unifies a community and what polarizes it is a visionary quality (Broome & Marshall, 2021, p. 207). Connectedness reminds us as individuals that we are here to make the world better than we found it. Connectedness inserts an interpersonal competency of mindfulness of how a kind word or deed can perpetuate positivity on a large scale (Rath, 2021, p.61).

Core Values, Strengths, & Characteristics

               Self-Assurance is a strength I aim to reinforce in the realm of the collaborative care model. There are instances when my certainty inhibits my willingness to listen.  An actionable idea of applying the core value of humility can assure others that their thoughts and opinions are valuable (Rath, 2021, p. 147). My character trait of willingness can be called upon to allow cohesiveness to prevail.

Achiever is where I need more balance. I often avoid celebrating successes, feeling they may seem prideful or lead to complacency. A core value of happiness must be remembered. My achievement can be observed in a manner of helping others. When I can draw upon my success with humility to inspire others, I will feel happiness in my own life. Creativity is my most underutilized character trait. Working in a world of evidence-based practice and organizational policies, I often stifle my creativity to stay within structural parameters. A transformational component of leadership is to influence positive social change (Broome & Marshall, 2021, p. 206). Change cannot occur without new ideas. Time to dust off my creativity and put it to work for my Achiever!

In conclusion, self-awareness is the key to unlocking the interconnectedness of our strengths and finding their utility in all aspects of life. Weaknesses will undoubtedly emerge, but synthesizing core values and personal attributes is the antidote to ameliorating their impact.

The Clifton StrengthsFinder is a tool developed by Gallup. The tool ranks the five most dominant themes of talent based on the responses that an individual provides to a set of questions. As a result, the tool can help individuals to identify their strengths and weaknesses, leverage the strengths in their professions, and develop appropriate strategies to overcome their weaknesses. Studies have found that the tool is important to medical students and professionals due to its validity as a tool for assessing and predicting an individual’s performance, promoting positive behavioral change, and achieving professional growth and development (Bloom, 2018; Comer et al., 2019; Moore et al., 2021). After completing the StrengthsFinder assessment task, I identified five of my strengths and other areas in which I may need to improve to enhance my competence as a healthcare professional.

The results from the Clifton StrengthsFinder Tool listed achiever, responsibility, learner, belief, and relator as my five most important strengths as ranked from the most dominant. Regarding the achiever theme, the results explained that I am a person who is in constant pursuit of achievement, exploration of new experiences, and success within workgroups. In the case of the responsibility theme, the results revealed that I am committed, dependable, reputable, and willing to volunteer whenever needed. Further, the results revealed that I have a strong desire to learn, develop new interests, grow my confidence, and acquire new skills. I also realized that I have strong core values, altruistic, trustworthy, and consistent as evidenced by the belief theme. Finally, the relator theme revealed that I have a positive attitude towards relationships, a desire to meet new people, and a willingness to accept risks that arise from being too close to other people. I believe that this tool is an accurate representation of who I am at both personal and professional levels. However, there are several core values, strengths, and characteristics that I may need to strengthen to enhance my competencies.

Compassion and teamwork are some of the core values that I may need to develop. While the belief theme revealed many of the core values that I already possess (including endurance, family-oriented, altruism, spirituality, responsibility, and high ethics), strengthening my compassion and teamwork values could help me to succeed as a clinician. Studies show that healthcare workers must be compassionate to serve their patients despite the challenges they face in their work (Malenfant et al., 2022). Nevertheless, they should be capable of working in teams to work collaboratively with patients and other professionals towards improving the health of the patient (Rosen et al., 2018). As such, strengthening these core values should be a priority.

Strategic and adaptability are some of the strengths that I may need to strengthen to enhance my competencies. Strategic people can easily identify patterns, evaluate alternatives, and select the best choice. On the other hand, adaptability helps people to suit in different settings and relate with different people. These strengths are needed in the healthcare sector based on its dynamic nature, the uniqueness of the patients that clinicians encounter, and the importance of adapting to new health management strategies (Lyng et al., 2021; van Olmen et al., 2019). Finally, I may need to improve on the characteristics of empathy and emotional intelligence. These characteristics are essential in the healthcare sector where professionals are expected to nurture relationships with coworkers and patients, communicate effectively with other people, and minimize the risk of conflicts (Khademi et al., 2021). These improvements are essential for all healthcare workers since they align with the principles of practice and enable these professionals to cope with the various challenges they encounter in their workplaces.

 

 

References

Bloom, T. J. (2018). Comparison of StrengthsQuest signature themes in student pharmacists and other health care profession students. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, 82(1), 6142. https://doi.org/10.5688/ajpe6142

Comer, R. D., Schweiger, T. A., & Shelton, P. (2019). Impact of students’ strengths, critical thinking skills and disposition on academic success in the first year of a PharmD program. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, 83(1), 6499. https://doi.org/10.5688/ajpe6499

Khademi, E., Abdi, M., Saeidi, M., Piri, S., & Mohammadian, R. (2021). Emotional intelligence and quality of nursing care: A need for continuous professional development. Iranian Journal of Nursing and Midwifery Research, 26(4), 361. https://doi.org/10.4103/ijnmr.ijnmr_268_19

‌ Lyng, H. B., Macrae, C., Guise, V., Haraldseid-Driftland, C., Fagerdal, B., Schibevaag, L., Alsvik, J. G., & Wiig, S. (2021). Balancing adaptation and innovation for resilience in healthcare – a meta-synthesis of narratives. BMC Health Services Research, 21(1), 759. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-021-06592-0

Malenfant, S., Jaggi, P., Hayden, K. A., & Sinclair, S. (2022). Compassion in healthcare: An updated scoping review of the literature. BMC Palliative Care, 21(1), 80. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12904-022-00942-3

Moore, H. L., van Mierlo, H., & Bakker, A. B. (2021). Development and validation of the Behavioural Index of Occupational Strengths (BIOS). Human Resource Development International, 1(1), 1–30. https://doi.org/10.1080/13678868.2021.1959776

Rosen, M. A., DiazGranados, D., Dietz, A. S., Benishek, L. E., Thompson, D., Pronovost, P. J., & Weaver, S. J. (2018). Teamwork in healthcare: Key discoveries enabling safer, high-quality care. American Psychologist, 73(4), 433–450. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000298

Van Olmen, J., Marchal, B., Ricarte, B., Van Damme, W., & Van Belle, S. (2019). The need for a dynamic approach to health system-centered innovations comment on “what health system challenges should responsible innovation in health address? Insights from an international scoping review.” International Journal of Health Policy and Management, 8(7), 444–446. https://doi.org/10.15171/ijhpm.2019.25