Personal Leadership Analysis Sample Paper
Part 1: Critical leadership competencies for health care organizations
The health care industry, like any other industry, must face the reality that change is an existing constant. In fact, it is not hard to accept that the health care industry is shifting at a fast pace with the internal and external environments offering new sets of demands, diseases, medical devices, regulations, rules and so on to influence the landscape. Irrespective of whether these changes occurs as large or small shifts, it is undeniable that health care leaders are being faced by forces that create new conditions posing significant challenge to even the most experienced leaders. Faced with these set of circumstances, health care leaders are forced to rethink their leadership models and make speedy adjustments to how they operate. The leaders who are unable to make these rapid adjustments will ultimately become obsolete even as they are forced out of their positions. Those who are able to adapt to the changing environment find it easier to continue surviving as leaders (Mason et al., 2015)Personal Leadership Analysis Sample Paper.
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To put the issue into perspective, let us consider the health care environment in the US. Health care delivery is being consolidated in medical facilities and independent practitioners who are trained using templates that have not been revised for long. The training is also fragmented between the different levels of education. Even with the present of good intentions, regulations, rules, procedures and policies, care outcomes relatively remains unfavorable with high mortality rates from leadership errors. On the other hand, information technology has increasingly become important within the industry although matched by slow adoption. The key issue is that the health care delivery in both inpatient and outpatient settings continue to operate ways that speedily turn ineffective (Curran, 2016)Personal Leadership Analysis Sample Paper. Based on these set of circumstances, it is not surprising that health care leaders would require specific competencies to allow them to continue thriving and surviving in their positions.
The first leadership competency for health care organizations is professionalism. This is defined as the subjective use of both experience and education to complete specific roles and responsibilities as allocated. To be more precise, a leader that applies professionalism is typically well versed in health care rules and is able to solve ill-defined problems that arise within ambiguous situation where established guidelines and procedures may not arise. The implication is that any leader that applies professionalism as a competency must assume the responsibility of identifying and applying the best alternative when there is no available right alternative. Although medical personnel work within practice settings that are dominated by established standards, operating procedures, discretionary practice, limited judgment scope, and decisional hierarchy, leaders do not necessarily face the same limitations and must act as motivated and well educated individuals, using their unique knowledge and skills to make decisions. Even as leaders apply professionalism, they must understand that the health environment is suffused with complexities, messiness and ambiguity even as the environment expands to include other stakeholders. As such, leaders would use professionalism competency to balance benefits and risks, cons and pros, and costs where making decisions that could be difficult or unpopular (Northouse, 2016)Personal Leadership Analysis Sample Paper.
The second leadership competency for health care organizations is innovative thinking. It is concerning with the creation and identification of novel ways to address challenging health care problems and situations. In fact, leaders with this competency are expected to come up with new and different solutions or use evidence-based practice concepts to adapt ideas elsewhere. Overall, this competency is concerned with moving the health organization forward by applying old ideas in new ways or new ideas to generation approaches and solution. At its highest level of application, the competence is concerned with lateral though and creation of new concepts. As such, health care leaders require innovative thinking competence to address problems and situations in the best possible way even as they arise (Roussel, 2013)Personal Leadership Analysis Sample Paper.
The third leadership competency for health care organizations is business and financial skills. There is no denying that leaders will deal with financial aspects of management at one point or the other. This is particularly true when it is considered that every decision by a leader has the potential to affect financial performance either through preparing a budget, scheduling operations and other activities. Without business and financial skills, the leader would not be able to understand the financial implications of the decision thus negatively impacting the organization’s financial performance, and wasting resources. The same is true for health care leaders who would consider the skills as an integral part of the basic management toolkit. Leaders require five particular skills. The first skill is financial analysis of strategic initiatives that are necessary to improve financial and operational performance. The second skill is variance analysis that presents the ranges for possible outcomes. The third skill is budget preparation that quantifies the resources required to achieve action plans and objectives for set fiscal periods. The second skill is familiarity with financial statements that facilitate communication with financial and accounting personnel. The final skill is accounting that allows for recording of business transactions. The mentioned skills are important in ensuring that each decision does not have a negative impact on the organization’s financial performance (Bowie, 2013)Personal Leadership Analysis Sample Paper.
The fourth leadership competency for health care organizations is achievement and strategic orientation. This is concerned with the capacity to link the long-term objectives with short-term objectives. It ranges from comprehending simple concepts to sophisticated awareness of the effects of actions and thoughts. For leaders, this competency allows them to operate and think broadly with the objective of being sustainable while furthering the organization goals in ways that support the collective public interest. This also requires the leader to take responsibility to collaboratively design and implement approaches that redress past grievances while implementing frameworks to prevent their reoccurrence. The competence is demonstrated when the leader learns what defines success and draws motivation from that definition, considers stakeholders issues and interest within the great context, maximizes available resources, champions effective strategies, and offers contingency plans (Palaveev, 2012)Personal Leadership Analysis Sample Paper.
The final leadership competency for health care organizations is transformational leadership. This competency acknowledges that given the ever changing health care environment and the awareness that the fastest, biggest or strongest are not guaranteed to survive evolution, it is important for every leader to perpetually adapt to change. This requires the leader to recognize the capabilities and needs of the organization, and adapt them to the environment. The leader should be able to promotion a transformational culture that is open to collaboration and change that allows creativity to flourish. In addition, the leader should have extensive knowledge of the health care environment in terms of what patients require, how the health care industry can meet this need, what the organization offers, and what the competition offers. Besides that, the leader should have knowledge of the existing innovations and how legislations affect operations (Curran, 2016). In this respect, health care leaders should have five leadership essential competencies that include professionalism, innovative thinking, business and financial skills, achievement and strategic orientation, and transformational leadership to improve their efficiency in completing their tasks.
Part 2: Personal Leadership Gap Analysis
A personal leadership gap analysis was conducted using a 19-item STAR format competency rating tool (see Appendix A). The outcome ratings determined my competency for the identified items. My best performance with a score of five was reported in seven items that include accountability, collaboration, information seeking, initiative, innovative thinking, project management, and self-confidence. This performance is an indication that I am good at confronting performance problems, encouraging others, conducting research to maintain knowledge, taking action on long-term opportunities, applying ‘tried and true’ concepts or trends, providing project oversight and sponsorship, and taking on challenges. My performance is at the peak for these items to show that I am satisfied with the leadership competencies concerning these items and can consider them my strengths. However, I would still need to reinforce the competencies since my responsibilities and expectations as a leader are only expected to increase Personal Leadership Analysis Sample Paper.
I performed well with a score of four in nine items to that include achievement orientation, change leadership, impact and influence, interpersonal understanding, organizational awareness, self-development, strategic orientation, team leadership, and communication skills. This performance is an indication that I set and work to meet challenging goals, challenge the status quo, use indirect influence, committed to understanding others, adapt actions to climate and culture, pursue long-term personal development, conduct environmental scanning, demonstrate leadership, and communicate in a clear, logical and grammatical manner. Although not at the peak, my performance in this items shows that I am close to being satisfied and would require a little more effort to achieve the peak.
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I had an average performance with a score of three in three items that include financial skills, performance measurement, and process management and organizational design. This performance is an indication that I only have barely acceptable financial skills, capacity to monitor a ‘scorecard of quantitative and qualitative measures, and capacity to benchmark best processes and practices. My performance in this items shows that they are my weaknesses and I must improve my leadership competencies through education and practice.
Overall, these results show that although I am not proficient in the five critical leadership competencies, I can leverage my strengths to offer good value to any organization. Firstly, I have the capacity to embrace complexity and chaos as reflected by my performance in the accountability, change leadership, achievement orientation, initiative, innovative thinking, organizational awareness, project management, self-confidence, strategic orientation, team leadership, and communication skills. This is an indication that I can maintain good control over my leadership area, ensuring that all efforts is directed towards the same direction to achieve a common objective. Secondly, I have the capacity for change management. This is reflected by my performance in accountability, achievement orientation, change leadership, collaboration, impact and influence, information seeking, initiative, innovative thinking, interpersonal understanding, organizational awareness, performance measurement, project management, self-confidence, strategic orientation, team leadership, and communication skills. This shows that I am able to lead change as a continuous and ongoing process. Thirdly, I have good communication skills. This is reflected by my performance in change leadership, collaboration, impact and influence, information seeking, interpersonal understanding, team leadership, and communication skills. This shows that I am able to conduct conversations to include checking for understand, using unambiguous and clear language, carefully listening, and following up on the conversation to meet commitments as declared Personal Leadership Analysis Sample Paper.
Fourthly, I have the capacity for systems thinking. This is reflected by my performance in collaboration, impact and influence, interpersonal understanding, project management, team leadership, and communication skills. This shows that I would support cooperation and collaboration among and between sub-units of management as a strategy for presenting effective leadership and management. Finally, I have emotional intelligence. This is reflected by my performance in collaboration, impact and influence, interpersonal understanding, organizational awareness, project management, team leadership, and communication skills. This shows that I am able to handle relationships, recognize emotions that exist in others, motivate myself and others, manage emotions, and know emotions. These results in the five competencies offer me opportunities for career development by identifying me as a leader, although addressing my weaknesses and leveraging my strengths through more education and gaining experience would make me more attractive to employers. As a result, I have some achievements in the five leadership essential competencies but would need to improve my knowledge and skills in these competencies to be an efficient leader.
Part 3: Individual Leadership Development Plan (ILDP)
The results from the STAR format competency rating shows that of the 19 items, I had good results in 16 items but only had average results in three items that marked my worst performances and weaknesses. The three items included financial skills, performance measurement, and process management and organizational design. My ultimate objective is to be an effective leader, with the capacity to positively inspire others into achieving set objectives. This has a close link with my weaknesses and strengths as reflected in my personal leadership assessment. Minimizing the weaknesses while leveraging the strengths will turn me into a better leader. The strengths enable me to align tasks with objectives while creating cohesive teams that present successful outcomes. Although I have my strengths as a leader, I have concerns about the three weaknesses I exhibited. I have average performance in financial skills, showing that I do not have the skills to competently navigate the financial aspects of management. In addition, I have a weakness with regards to performance measurement, particularly the capacity to monitor scorecards of quantitative and qualitative measures. Also, I have average performance in process management and organizational design, particularly the ability to benchmark best processes and practices. These weakness reduce m effectiveness as a leader. The best strategy for addressing these weaknesses is to gain more leadership knowledge and experience with a focus on the weaknesses.
It is clear that although my main objective is to become a successful leader, this is simply the ultimate objective. To achieve this, I need to set short-term objectives whose summation result in the long-term objective being achieved. Through these short-term objectives, I will be better able to evaluate my professional progress and know what has and has not been achieved. The objectives will allow me to improve my communication skills, interpersonal skills, self-confidence, and financial skills. My first short term goal is to improve my financial skills with regard to presenting and interpreting financial data. Although I am yet to achieve this goal, I have implemented active steps towards that end. This involved enrolling in a formal school to learn more about financial management principles and skills application. I have enrolled in an institution where I am receiving education on financial skills and hope to achieve my objective in two years. I would assess my performance through performance in school (Northouse, 2016). My second short term goal is to improve my interpersonal skills. I am enrolled in a school that offers me a social environment where I can engaged with other students, faculty personnel and school staff from different cultural backgrounds. Through interacting with the members of the school community, I anticipate to improve my interpersonal skills. I expect to graduate in two years and will evaluate my performance through the number of social networks that I create in school such as the number of social media friends from school and the number of social organizations joined. The third short term goal is to improve my communication skills, comprehending that the essence of human interaction is communication. I understand that through accurately grasping communication principles, I will be able to express my intentions and understand what others intend. I expect to graduate from school in two years after completing the communication skills units and will assess my performance through reviewing my results in the results for the units (Roussel, 2013)Personal Leadership Analysis Sample Paper.
Two resources will help me to achieve the three short term objectives. The first resource is the school and education center. The formal education program will allow me to acquire knowledge on financial principles through classwork and assignments. The evaluation of how well I use this resource will rely on assignments and examination results. I anticipate that if I use this resource well, I will be able to acquire additional knowledge on financial and leadership principles, enhance my competence as a leader, and improve my self-confidence. The second resource is the social learning environment both within the school and outside when acquiring field experience. This environment will offer me practical skills and knowledge on leadership. These two resources are complementary and will allow me to link theoretical and practical knowledge to improve my capacity as a leader (Franz, 2012; Palaveev, 2012).
Through acquiring financial skills, interpersonal skills, and communication skills, I will improve my capacity as a leader. I understand that the health care industry is structurally and organizationally complex. As a health care leader, I am expected to perform complex managerial tasks requiring these skills. In fact, I require financial skills to communicate with the finance personnel and ensure that every decision I make does not have a negative impact on the organization’s financial skills. Also, I require interpersonal and communication skills to enable me communicate with other stakeholders. In this respect, my leadership development will enable me to be a better leader with the capacity to improve my organization’s performance.
Northouse, P. (2016). Leadership: theory and practice (7th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Curran, C. (2016). Nurse on board: planning your path to the boardroom. Indianapolis, IN: Sigma Theta Tau International.
Mason, D., Gardner, D., Outlaw, F. & O’Grady, E. (2015). Policy & politics in nursing and health care (7th ed.). St. Louis, MO: Elsevier.
Roussel, L. (2013). Management and leadership for nurse administrators (6th ed.). Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Bowie, N. (2013). Business ethics in the 21st century. New York, NY: Springer.
Franz, T. (2012). Group dynamics and team interventions: understanding and improving team performance. West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons.
Palaveev, P. (2012). The ensemble practice: a team-based approach to building a superior wealth management firm. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. Personal Leadership Analysis Sample Paper
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This assessment has three distinct parts. Part 1: Critical Leadership Competencies for Health Care Organizations. In Part 1, based on the information from your resources, provide an overview of the leadership competencies required to lead health care organizations into the future. Part 2: Personal Leadership Gap Analysis. In Part 2, compare the competencies most needed by your organization (from your work in Assessment 1) to the skills you already possess (using the results from your STAR analysis). Part 3: Individual Leadership Development Plan (ILDP). In Part 3, use the information from your resources, your self-assessment, and your work in Assessment 1 to put together a cohesive individual leadership development plan (ILDP). Preparation Before you create and submit your assessment, complete the following: Read Health Leadership Competency Model Summary, linked in the Resources under the Required Resources heading. Consider the needs of your health care organization as identified in the Assessment 1 Organizational Scorecard. Consider how you add value to the organization by contributing to the achievement of the internal benchmarks within your department and specific to your position of employment. Conduct a candid self-assessment of your health care leadership competencies, using the Star Format Competency Table linked in the Resources under the Required Resources heading. Once you have a clear picture of your strengths and weaknesses, you will construct an individual leadership development plan to focus upon development of critical success competencies that can help you take your organization into the future. To complete the STAR Format Competency Table, follow these directions: In the left-hand column, rate your overall performance of this competency in the \”ILDP =\” field, using a 1 (novice) to 9 (expert) scale. In the middle columns, provide a specific behavioral example of how you have practiced each competency in a previous work, volunteer or other capacity. You will provide one sentence on the \”Situation,\” the \”Task\” you were charged to perform, the \”Action\” you took, and the \”Result\” (S–T–A– R). In the far right-hand column, rate the outcome or result of the specific example by using a 1 (least desirable) to 5 (optimal outcome) scale. Search for professional, scholarly journal articles on the leadership skills and competencies needed in health care organizations today and into the future. You will need a minimum of five resources to use as support for your assessment. Directions Read the requirements for each part carefully. Part 1: Critical Leadership Competencies for Health Care Organizations Based on the resources you located, identify the top five leadership competencies needed within health care administration in order to ensure the success of health care organizations today and in the future. Explain why each competency is critical to organizational success. Part 2: Personal Leadership Gap Analysis Following completion of the STAR assessment, consider your strengths versus those areas which require additional development. Provide a gap analysis that compares industry needs (as identified in Part 1), the needs of your organization (from your organization\’s strategic direction), and the results of your STAR assessment. In a brief narrative, explain any discrepancies between industry needs and organizational needs. Explain how your areas of strength can offer you additional opportunities for career advancement. Part 3: Individual Leadership Development Plan (ILDP) Using the information and resources from Assessment 1 and Parts 1 and 2 from this assessment, construct a cohesive individual leadership development plan in which you complete the following: Identify at least three specific areas of weakness you need to focus on in order to meet industry and organizational needs. Explain the action steps you need to take to increase your competency in those areas. Be sure your action steps are specific, include a timeline, and align with the overall goal of meeting industry and organizational needs. Create specific performance indicators and measures for each action step to clearly illustrate how you will know that you are making progress on your plan. If it helps you organize your thoughts, you may use a table format for your ILDP. Just be sure you provide enough detail in each section, relative to the expectations laid out in the scoring guide. You are not required to use a table format; if you prefer, you may simply write this section as a narrative. Additional Requirements Structure: Include a title page, table of contents, and reference page.
Personal Leadership Analysis Sample Paper