Personal Leadership Style
My personal leadership style revolves around generating innovative ideas and communicating them to the rest of the group, in order to get them excited for it and motivate them to achieve new heights. As a leader, I seek to make sure everyone in the team understands what we are doing and why. Therefore, generating and outlining the main principles of our vision and mission is critically important. While some individuals are easy to excite and get on board with changes and new projects, others are resistant to such influence. I use my charisma and personal relations with such people in order to get them to participate as part of the team. My preferred style of leadership is Visionary, which relies on the generation of new ideas and peoples’ willing participation in the project (Huber, 2017). I adopt a laisses-faire approach, which allows me to establish a direction and let my team members pursue the objective at their own pace. It is efficient in projects, where structure and discipline are less important than creativeness and initiative (Huber, 2017). It also is useful in situations where the leader physically cannot control their subordinates’ actions and has to rely on their independent decision-making capabilities.
Why Self-Awareness in Leadership is Important for Nurses?
Self-awareness is important in nursing for several reasons. First, it is good to know one’s own predispositions towards certain leadership styles. It enables studying that style in depth in order to become adept at it and implement it in accordance to the situation. For example, an individual that his high on communication and interaction with others may benefit from adopting a democratic, transformational, or servant leadership style (Huber, 2017). Individuals lacking in communication may seek to adopt styles that do not require constant communication between leaders and members. Second, self-awareness also enables the nurse to be able to plan ahead to compensate for the faults and weaknesses of their own approach. An authoritarian leader may purposefully allow a degree of independence to their members in order to not suffocate their initiative. Third, being self-aware of one’s leadership style allows shifting between other forms that are congruent to one’s primary inclination (Huber, 2017).
Understanding one’s own predisposition towards certain leadership styles is a crucial part of team-forming (ANA, 2018). Some people respond better to particular leadership styles, meaning that they would fit better with certain leaders while being less efficient with others. Understanding one’s own preferences would allow a nurse to assemble better teams as well as being an efficient member in one where the leadership role is placed on someone else. For example, highly-initiative and creative team members would not fit well with an authoritarian or a transactional leader. Likewise, individuals that prefer structure and hierarchy would feel lost under laisses-faire leadership (Huber, 2017). Finally, understanding one’s own personality in relation to leadership allows for personal development in different directions, to make up for one’s weaknesses and make oneself fit to utilize other leadership techniques (ANA, 2018).
Being an Effective Communicator: Leadership Traits
Communication is the most important part in leadership, as it enables individuals to understand the leader and the agenda he or she sets up for them (Murray et al., 2018). At the same time, without communication, a leader would not be able to receive feedback and adjust the group’s actions and plans accordingly. Being able to deliver the most important information in a complete and concise way are some of the traits necessary for an effective communicator. Friendliness and consideration of other peoples’ capabilities to follow and understand are also necessary, as no employee should feel threatened by their leader. Finally, in order to receive fruitful feedback, the leader must understand the subject of the conversation and be able to listen to what is being said, without interrupting or derailing the interaction (Murray et al., 2018).
Leadership Styles for Effective Communication
Certain leadership styles rely on communication more so than others. Democratic leadership style requires communication between all members as a means of determining the course of action (Huber, 2017). Without communication, the essential part of exchanging ideas and coming up with better solutions would be lost. Servant leadership requires the leader to get to know the members of their teams better in order to help them improve and grow, otherwise any helpful directions given would only be guessing, and thus prone to take the person in a wrong direction. Finally, transformational leadership style is often used in change management (Huber, 2017). Without communicating the purposes of changes to all stakeholders involved, the levels of resistance to change are likely to be higher, resulting in negative performance.
Importance of Communication in Interprofessional Collaboration
Interprofessional collaboration requires specialists of different vocations to work on a single patient in order to deliver a holistic pattern of care, which would address all aspects of health, including physical, emotional, and psychological (ANA, 2018). Collaboration between different individuals requires communication, as without it, the abundance of ideas and experiences available to individual members will remain undisclosed. As no single specialist can be experienced in everything, interprofessional communication is necessary for complex diagnoses and long-term treatments. Finally, a lack of communication may cause confusion as to who is responsible for what. Therefore, the process is used for three purposes: exchanging ideas, successfully producing quality diagnoses, and organizing treatments in a non-conflicting manner (ANA, 2018).
References
American Nursing Association (ANA). (2018). Competency model. Web.
Huber, D. (2017). Leadership and nursing care management. New York, NY: Elsevier Health Sciences.
Murray, M., Sundin, D., & Cope, V. (2018). The nexus of nursing leadership and a culture of safer patient care. Journal of clinical nursing, 27(5-6), 1287-1293.