Personal Leadership Reflection

What are some of the personal dynamics in my life that impact my leadership style? I believe that it all starts with me and how I raise my children. As a parent, you are called to be a leader. We teach our children to be honest, respectful and, do their best at whatever they set out to accomplish. We do this in hopes that when the time comes for them to leave home, they will have a firm understanding of what it takes to be a good person. The similarities in parenting roll into my leadership at work. As a leader, we apply the same principles that we are teaching our children to our constituents, in hopes that they aspire to grow in their professional lives.

For the last 8 years of my career I have been in leadership positions within financial service organisations. I have lead team of up to 30 people, across multiple regions and locations, and I have been in leadership positions that have no direct report and required a high level of stakeholder management and influencing skills to achieve outcomes. My first leadership position was with QBE Insurance were I was a team leader for 18 people in the Property and Casualty Insurance claims department. IN this role I was responsible for leading, coaching and developing my team to ensure we maintained required service levels and financial results. From this role I moved into a National role with the Commonwealth Bank, were I lead a support function team

This paper will focus upon the learner’s personal leadership assessment, and on qualities that are inherent to leadership as a whole. The leadership skill assessment questionnaire produced an overall score of 26. According to the questionnaire, this was above average in all areas. However, the learner is able to identify areas of continued growth needed to achieve future career goals. Subsequently, these areas will be divulged in this paper as well.

As a leader, I have five core values that matter most to me; having a family, maintaining order(tranquility), meaningful work, growth, and truth. I strongly believe in each one of these components. Having a family is so important because they are a main support system. Family doesn’t have to be someone who is blood related. Family can be anyone who you feel means a lot to you and supports you. Maintaining order(tranquility) is important because in the work place, you need to have organization of some sort. With order, everything will simply fall into place. Meaningful work describes itself. If what you’re doing isn’t meaningful to you then why are you doing it? Growth is a key component because the point of doing something is hopefully to reach a goal that you have set for yourself. You should aim to keep growing to eventually reach your goals. Finally, truth is another very important value that I have. I believe truth can bring you happiness. If you are living your life with lies on your mind you will never be content. Altogether, these five components make up my list of most important personal values.

In preparation for this assignment, I hope to gain a better insight as to what areas of personal and professional leadership development I need to improve upon the most. Introspection is an important part of growth and development. Therefore, I believe finding answers to the questions posed in this assignment will help me achieve a better understanding of myself. The Leadership Development Plan will also encourage me to work on my long term developmental goals. I hope it will help me improve upon the relationships I have with current and future employees as well as upper management. I am optimistic that through our readings, coursework, and peer engagement, I will become a better leader.

The field of nursing is dynamic, challenging, and continuously changing, requiring strong and encouraging nurse leaders. From working at the bedside and providing direct patient care, nurses leaders are in a unique position to promote safe and quality patient care. A systematic review by Wong, Cummings, & Ducharme (2013) found that the relational leadership style resulted in improved patient satisfaction and patient safety outcomes, such as lower patient mortality, reduced medication errors, reduced restrain use, and fewer hospital-acquired infections. With a continuously changing and demanding healthcare environment, identifying and developing nurse leaders is challenging. Self-reflection and awareness is necessary to be a good leader, allowing one to identify limitations in leadership style to develop and improve upon leadership skills.

I believe that of any person with leadership skills has the potential in becoming a good leader. I also believe a person can lead if he or she has good core values views of the world. One core value from each level, including individual, between-people, organizational, and social, showing how individuals are acting towards the values others. These values help to complete my personal model of leadership, and how I conducted myself as a leader when I was in a leadership role (Smith, 2005).

One of the single most important qualities within the practice of nursing is being a team member, and having a strong team to deliver safe, competent and ethical nursing care (Blakey, 2015). To be able to create a solid team, a true and strong leader must rise, as well as other members that are dedicated to practicing good followership. Effective leadership improves the workplace for leaders and followers, as well as increases results in the care of patients largely (RNAO, 2013). In this paper, I will explore my individual qualities I demonstrate as both a leader and a follower, as well as acknowledge my areas of weakness. Lastly, I will also discuss my plans in how I will strive to achieve my goals as a future leader.

This essay assesses my personal leadership analysis and action plan. This paper has four separate components intending to provide a self-assessment, personal experiences, personal relationships, and an action plan. The first part will discuss four of my self-assessments, from this course, that will evaluate my leadership characteristics, strengths, and weaknesses. The second section of the paper will isolate personal leadership experiences that were significant in my life. Additionally, the section discusses what I learned and how my leadership evolved from these experiences. The third part will identify people who have affected and influenced my attitudes and ideas about leadership. In addition, this part will explain what impact that these individuals had on my leadership style. The fourth section of the paper will outline a personal action plan for developing my leadership skills. Furthermore, giving examples of goals and actions that I would like to achieve to improve my leadership skills in the future.

In my previous assignments, I described why the cooperation negotiation strategy, dispositional flexibility, equal opportunity, emotional health dimension, and inclusion was important to me. To elaborate on those concepts, I included some past incidents I encountered that depicted each concept. In doing so, I managed to identify a common factor in the way I led. As a leader, I seemed to only act when there was an issue that needed attention. At that point, it became very evident that I was emulating the behavioural traits of a transactional leader. To be more specific, my leadership style aligned with management by exception passive. My passive approach to leadership works in certain environments but I now understand where I was lacking as a leader.

Leadership can be defined as coaching and mobilizing people and resources to achieve a goal. To be a leader one must have certain traits and skills that can be learned as well as certain attributes that can be nurtured. Leaders are in place to inspire, challenge, and encourage others. They should be able to persuade and influence, and also show flexibility and determination. Throughout this class I have read, seen, and done self –assessments that have shaped and influenced my perspectives on leadership.

In this paper, I will explore both female and male leadership in two novels, which we have read as part of our honors class. The novels are, Isabel Allende’s House of Spirits and William Faulkner’s Go down, Moses, The Bear. I will offer my own opinion and experiences on leadership as well as discussing how leadership is important in modern society today.

As an educational leader, I have encountered several new and existing school policies. I never thought deeply about the various processes and the stakeholders involved in policy formulation and implementation. This semester I am engaged in the course Managing Educational Policy as School Leaders (EDLM 6005). This is Semester III, 2016/2017. My course coordinator is Dr. Timar Stephenson. Dr Stephenson was my course coordinator once before and was very helpful whenever I needed clarification or when I had a difficulty. I am thrilled to embrace the new ideas and learning opportunities embedded in this course since it teaches issues which I experience at work. Dr Stephenson, during his introduction reminded his entire class that success in this course would only be realized through hard work, dedication, and commitment. Therefore, it is imperative that I have the right attitude as I navigate this course. The course involves seven weeks of intense work. I am pleased to have a wonderful group facilitator by the name of Rhonda Joseph who has already given us a BBC to explain the requirements of the course and our first two modules.

Due to my passive nature, I’ve always avoided leadership roles. With that being said I still aspire to be someone who can be looked to as a leader. In order to reach that goal I observe and try to mimic the actions of people that inspire me. There have been many people I’ve taken orders from, but I have “followed” few. Those are the ones I consider to be true leaders, and have tried to be like myself.

The objective of this reflection is to expose critically how I could evaluate my own experience with relation to the theories and ideas about Leadership. In other words, how this lecture and insights changed my personal notion, as well, how I could amplify my knowledge about this subject. But I assume that the most important is to demonstrate how the application of Leadership skill is relevant in my career in the future.