Leadership and Group Collaboration

Assessment 1 focuses on your leadership skills and how you would use them to lead a project requiring collaboration. As a health care leader, you understand the critical nature of this topic. I am sharing this post, to provide you a few quick reminders as you approach Assessment 1.Leadership and Group Collaboration

  • Please be sure to read all the Assessment links! These links are included, as they are vital to your learning and key to mastering this content.
  • The Assessment requires you to construct a 3-4-page double-spaced letter, which is a response to the scenario – be sure to read the scenario.
  • Within the resources, you will find an Assessment Example and a link to the Scoring Guide. Study both!
  • While this is a letter, you are to integrate at least 2-3-relevant sources to support your content (the sources embedded in the assessment are great options) and you must cite these sources per APA format. This includes in-text citation in the content of the letter and a reference section at the conclusion of the letter.

    ORDER A PLAGIARISM -FREE PAPER NOW

  • Finally, this is an academic paper! Be sure to include a title page (see the example assessment for a great format sample).

Write a 3–4 page letter in which you analyze your leadership skills and how you would use them to lead a project requiring group collaboration.

Assessments 1 and 2 are scenario-based, so you must complete them in the order in which they are presented.

Leadership is an integral element in any job, regardless of the work title. However, it is important to recognize that leadership is not just one single skill; instead, success in leadership depends on a broad range of skills, among them decision making, collaboration, and communication.

By successfully completing this assessment, you will demonstrate your proficiency in the following course competencies and assessment criteria:

  • Competency 1: Apply qualities, skills and practices used by effective healthcare leaders.
    • Describe the leadership qualities desirable for the proposed project.
    • Compare one’s own leadership skills against those of a chosen health care leader.
    • Explain one’s role as project leader, using approaches from a selected leadership model.
  • Competency 2: Apply practices that facilitate effective interprofessional collaboration.
    • Describe an approach to effectively facilitate collaboration among a professional team.
  • Competency 4: Produce clear, coherent, and professional written work,Leadership and Group Collaboration
    • Address assignment purpose in a well-organized text, incorporating appropriate evidence and tone in grammatically sound sentences.
  • Required Resources
  • The following resources are required to complete the assessment.

Preparation

Read the Assessment 1 Scenario. Information in your assessment should be based on information from the scenario.

Assessment 1 Use the following scenario as a basis to complete Assessment 1. Imagine that you work in a health care facility and your boss has just stopped by your office and says the following: Hi, I just have a couple of minutes – please forgive me for stopping in without advanced notice. One of the results of a recent employee survey at Lakeland Clinic indicates we have some issues to address. The data show 75% of the employees have concerns about at least one of the following: diversity issues, workplace incivility, and poor work-life balance. Senior leadership has asked me how I plan to respond, and my first inclination is to put you in charge of assembling a team to address one of the issues. You have demonstrated effective organizational and communication on other projects and I think you will be a great asset as we move forward. I have to run right now, but I’ll send you an email with more information before I leave today. See you later!

Subsequent Email: Thanks for talking with me this morning. I just want you to know that this is really a great opportunity for you. I know you have been interested in taking steps to becoming a leader in this organization and now it’s time to realize your potential. As you know we opened the Lakeland Medical Clinic to serve area residents who were unable or unwilling to use the services offered at the main hospital. The first two months of operation saw strong patient volume. Since then, the numbers have dropped off dramatically. This prompted leadership to start asking some questions, which lead to the internal survey that I mentioned yesterday. I just met with leadership and they determined that the priority right now is the diversity issue because we have the opportunity to improve outcomes for both employees and the community. This is part of an e-mail I got from the clinic director last week:Leadership and Group Collaboration

“…after careful examination of all aspects of the organization and talking with some neighborhood leaders we have concluded that residents in the community do not feel comfortable coming to the clinic. It seems the staff are lacking the ability to develop a trusting relationship with the residents primarily because they do not understand the cultural values and norms. The neighborhood residents, which you know are predominantly Haitian, often feel their beliefs, values, and health practices are not understood. When staff members were hired, we only considered their past work experiences, education and potential. We may have failed to fully consider their ability to work with diverse populations.“

Hopefully the information gives you a better understanding of the issues to be addressed. Time to get started as things need to move quickly. I want you to assemble a committee to clearly define the problem and ultimately provide guidance on solutions. Before introducing you to the clinic director and executive team, I want to review your approach specific to leadership style and collaboration. I want two things from you in a written document. The first part is just for me, but the second part I intend to share with the clinic director. First, identify and describe a leader you would choose to lead a project like this and explain why. It can be anyone that is qualified, even someone famous. Your choice will tell me a lot about your leadership approach and priorities. Next, select one of the characteristics that make them successful and compare it against your leadership skills. The second item is related to leading and fostering teamwork and collaboration among a group of interdisciplinary professionals. We are looking for 4–6 members to serve on a committee who will be considering the diversity issue and ultimately making a recommendation on how to address it.

I want you to:

  • Describe your role and approach to leading the group. How will you lead and communicate? Will you be an authoritative, collaborative, democratic, servant, or transformational type of leader? Analyze the strengths and weaknesses of your approach in the context of this project.
  • Describe how you would facilitate collaboration to maximize team effectiveness. You might consider:

o Communication technologies.

o Practices (accountability, decision making, delegating).

o Techniques for sharing information and ideas.

o Any others ideas you might have.

Remember this information will be shared with the clinic director so keep it clear, focused, and professional. Creativity is important; however, we want to be sure that your ideas and approaches align with current health care organization trends and practices, so include references from current academic or professional resources to support your points. ILeadership and Group Collaboration

Instructions

Develop a professional response to the supervisor using the template provided. The letter will have two main components:

  1. Identify the qualities of a successful leader and compare them to your own leadership characteristics.
  2. Make recommendations on how to lead and foster teamwork.

Submission Requirements

Your letter should be 3–4 double-spaced pages in length.

Apply correct APA formatting to all in-text citations and references.

Use Times New Roman, 12-point font.

Express your main points, arguments, and conclusions coherently.

Use correct grammar and mechanics.

Support your claims, arguments, and conclusions with credible evidence from 2–3 current, scholarly or professional sources.

Hello, Peter! I am excited about the possible opportunity to be part of the proposed project to address diversity at the facility. I strongly believe that the project needs a strong leader who exhibits unique leadership skills that facilitate efforts to complete the project. Having worked at this facility for three years, it is my opinion that the diversity project leader would need to exhibit two principal leadership qualities in order to effectively facilitate diversity development. This is especially so in the face of the organization’s blended organizational culture, group dynamics, gender differences, and cultural diversity. The first leadership quality is an understanding of cultural stereotypes. There is a need for the leader to avoid personal biases and stereotyping with a focus on being open minded to differences. An understanding of the cultural stereotyping would help the leader to value others and overcome personal biases. Personal biases against persons who are different could cause failure in building trust and productivity among the group members, as well as ensuring their commitment. Additionally, it is important for the leader to adopt an objective leadership approach that does not make assumptions. Also, the leader must lead by example to let others believe that the appropriate conduct is emphasized. Besides that, the leader must respect others to enable them reach their full potential. Respect incorporates other aspects of morality and ethics, and helps in avoiding cultural stereotypes (Finkelman, 2016).Leadership and Group Collaboration

ORDER A PLAGIARISM -FREE PAPER NOW

The second leadership quality is developing self-awareness in terms of identifying self-strengths and self-weaknesses. It is important for the project’s team leader to understand his/her individual reactions to approaches to decision-making and situations. Knowing behavior patterns and self-limitations (i.e. self-strengths and self-weaknesses) would help the leader to perform more effectively across different cultural settings. The ability to capitalize on individual advantages and overcome stereotypes is key to diversity management. In addition, the leader should appreciate individual differences as the environment is multicultural and complex requiring that individual uniqueness be appreciated. Every member of the project team and stakeholder at the facility has particular values, life experiences and cultural background that shape behavior, and understanding this differences is important for appreciating the diversely valuable inputs they bring into play. Besides that, understanding and appreciating similarities would help in closing the cultural gaps. Simply focusing on the differences is not an absolute way to solve the diversity problem (Ellis & Bach, 2015). The two leadership qualities would be desirable for the project.

An individual that I would choose to lead this project, if available, is Dr. Ninfa M. Saunders the CEO and President of Navicent Health, a non-profit medical organization located in Macon, Georgia. The organization coordinates its affiliated entities to provide reasonably priced and high quality health care services to the residents of the State of Georgia. Her management focus has been on implementing the fee-for-value framework at the facility while ensuring that the right health care is accessible to Georgians at the right cost, at the right rime. With 45 years of clinical and administrative experience, Dr. Saunders can be expected to rely on her rich portfolio to successfully lead the project (Navicent Health, 2020). Dr. Saunders is particularly suited for this project because of her leadership efforts to address diversity in the workplace. As the CEO of Navicent Health, she promoted many minorities by having them be evaluated by teams of many supervisors and managers rather than a single direct supervisor or manager. Also, she started a mentorship and coaching programs that developed talent based on capabilities. Her efforts helped in promoting objective management rather than subjective management. In addition, it helped the organization to develop a culture of equity, inclusion and diversity. In recognition of her leadership efforts to address diversity in health care organizations, Dr. Saunders won the American Hospital Association’s Equity of Care Award in 2018 (Modern Healthcare, 2018). Although I am not an accomplished leader as Dr. Saunders, I believe that I have the capacity to emulate her favorable leadership skills. Similar to her, I would focus on applying inclusive leadership that recognizes merit and capabilities rather than demographic qualities, such as age or gender. Still, our approach to leadership would slightly differ. As the organization’s CEO and President, Dr. Saunders has many responsibilities and has to delegate some of them. However, I would be a more hands on leader since I understand that things would only be done the way I want them if I closely supervise the team’s tasks even as I allow the team members to offer input into the team activities.Leadership and Group Collaboration

I understand that effective leadership is important for exciting the team members to exceptional performance. As a project leader, I would focus on creating a working environment and culture within the project that contributes to its performance and success. Towards this end, I would apply a democratic leadership model that builds consensus among the team members through shared leadership and participation. This leadership approach ensures that all the team members have equal opportunities to contribute towards defining and measuring the project objectives. This leadership model is considered appropriate and effective since it ensures that the team have ownership of the project and buy into its goals, plan and decisions. In addition, it ensures that consensus is applied in presenting fresh ideas and addressing uncertainties from qualified members. In applying the model, consensus would be built through participation that asks each member what he or she thinks. Communication is key in advancing this model, and ensuring that there is an overall positive impact on the project and organization (Black, 2020).

If offered the opportunity to lead the project team, I would apply leadership approaches to effective facilitate collaboration among the team members. I understand that collaboration is of important for any successful team. Collaboration would see increase levels of trust, more engaged team members, and improved performance. Given this awareness, I would prioritize collaboration through concerted effort to integrate cooperative values in the team ethos. Firstly, I would repeatedly share the team’s objectives thus giving the members a broader objective to work towards. This helps in bringing the members together under a common objective and working together towards achieving it. Secondly, I would communicate my expectations for collaboration as a minimum standard. This is important for ensuring that the team members understand that collaboration is prioritized. Thirdly, I would highlight individual strengths of the team members as this is important for making them feel appreciated as their value is recognized by the team. Fourthly, fostering open and honest communication that make the members feel they can contribute and share ideas thereby improving productivity. Finally, I would promote a team working environment. This creates a sense of community among the members so that they feel their opinions are important and are motivated to apply more effort (Kotter & Rathgeber, 2016).Leadership and Group Collaboration

The content of this email presents my opinions on the ideal leadership for the project team. I believe that implementing them would be invaluable in achieving the project objectives.

References

Black, B. (2020). Professional Nursing: Concepts & Challenges (9th ed.). Elsevier.

Ellis, P., & Bach, S. (2015). Leadership, Management and Team Working in Nursing (2nd ed.). SAGE Publications.

Finkelman, A. (2016). Leadership and management for nurses: core competencies for quality care (3rd ed.). Pearson Education.

Kotter, J. & Rathgeber, H. (2016). Our iceberg is melting: changing and succeeding under any conditions. London: Penguin Publishing Group.

Modern Healthcare (2018). Fostering Diversity for the Next Generation fo Healthcare Leaders. https://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20181013/NEWS/181019970/fostering-diversity-for-the-next-generation-of-healthcare-leaders

Navicent Health (2020). Meet Our CEO, Ninfa M. Saunders. https://www.navicenthealth.org/about-us/meet-our-ceo.html

Leadership and Group Collaboration