Dysfunctional Leadership

When I began this course I was very nervous because I had no idea of the scope of the course. I was unfamiliar with the Canadian education system and other students. After receiving instructions from my professor, I introduced myself to the person beside me and this process helped to break the ice. I developed a good friendship with the student and this technique used by the professor helped me develop better communication and relationship skills. After few classes, I felt very comfortable and the nervousness and anxiety faded away. I learned about leadership, power relationships in the profession, personal, cultural, professional and organizational, each of which is very important in the nurse’s career. I also gained knowledge regarding client centred care.

What insights have I gained about my role as an educational leader from these chapters?

Leadership course give a huge opportunity to develop my personality and leading skills to meet patient care outcome and quality of care in clinical practice also, Knowing that all my personal characteristic is consider as strength and how to use them in my area in effective way to increase organization productivity let me think in a different way to develop my skills as a leader. Effects of leadership have been demonstrated in relation to work-life balance, staff well-being, positive nursing outcomes, patient safety, openness about errors, and patient and staff satisfaction (Munir, Nielsen, 2013). Which is really mean that leading a group is consider as art. According to Harvard business review 2016 mention the Most Important Leadership Competencies,

In an exercise conducted in the Senior Enlisted Leadership Course (SELC), the five things I value most are Family, Faith, Honesty/Integrity, Patience, and Open-mindedness. I was born and raised a Catholic, attended Catholic school early on before moving to the public school system in junior high. The family has been the forefront of what my parents lived and work towards, so it became my life mission as I began my own family. Both parents lived a life of honesty and integrity which was a large influence in my careers. My first job was a bank teller at the age of 17; then moved into Government service at age 27. At the age of 35, I enlisted in the Coast Guard Reserve.

The three leadership styles are democratic, transformation, and authoritarian leadership. Democratic leadership is a type of leadership style in which members of the group take more participative role in the decision-making process. According to ANA (2010), in democratic leadership, everyone is given the opportunity to participate, exchanged ideas freely, and encourage discussion. The three attributes that defines democratic leadership are collective decision-making, active members, and camaraderie. In transformation leadership, the leader is not limited by his or her followers?, therefore, the leader

Dysfunctional leadership suffocate others with coercive power and ego, are unpredictable, and often lack self-awareness about their dysfunction (Shuck, Rose, & Bergman, 2015).It has an emphasis on selfishness, as its primary focus is on the leader’s goals and objectives contrasted with the needs of employees and the greater social organization. The impacts of dysfunctional leadership are felt in the outcomes of the organization that undermines the quality of life for individuals who are could either be internal or external to the organization and undermine their fundamental objectives. Undesirable organizational consequences are the result of a dysfunctional leader behavior and vulnerable followers working together in an enabling environment.

Throughout life, especially throughout this semester I feel as though I have learned more about myself than ever before. I have learned an excess of information of the characteristic I possess as a leader. Information such as this that I may have not learned about myself if I did not take Leadership 100. Characteristics I have learned about are through questionnaires, case studies and many more activities through the “ Introduction to Leadership Concepts and Practice”, by Peter Northouse. Northouse has written numerous books how to become a successful leader in your community. Provided that the results from these activities has given me insight on the three most important characteristic I maintain. They are high conceptual skills, implementer skills , and I have high skill emphasis.

If one has no leadership ability, one cannot be a leader. If one does not make what his or her followers consider the correct decisions to achieve their goals, no one will have faith in the leader's abilities and, consequently, no one will follow and without followers, there can be no leader. Another important criterion which one must have in order to be a leader is a person who leads a crowd in the direction where the goal can be accomplish as well as someone who acknowledges a problem and finds solutions to it.

The world of healthcare, its delivery and services are forever evolving; and in the interim so is its infrastructure and workforce capacity (Klienman, 2003). Healthcare executives must be equipped with the proper skills in order to be effective leaders in the field. Dye and Garman (2006) highlight various critical competencies all healthcare executives should harness in order to be influential leaders in their present or future leadership role. Some competences may come natural to individuals, while others have to be developed and strengthened over time. Leaders are faced with challenges such as ethical dilemmas, budgetary cuts and organizational restructuring. Furthermore they are also responsible for sustaining employee morale, being a visionary and a role model within their respective agencies. However, the key to their success in being an effective leader is based upon a foundation of the ability to influence and an understanding of their ethical approach to decision-making (Grenny, Patterson, Maxfield, McMillan & Switzler, 2013).

According to McPheat (2010), the main style of the leader is democratic. Democratic leader is who values the team’s ideas and looks for own input in decision-making. Furthermore, this style is tending to motivate members to do their best work (Cunningham, Salomone & Wiegus, 2015). However, even though democratic style values team’s ideas and decision making, leader will have to think about the decision for a long time that might be a disadvantage. The core beliefs and values is being a leader means taking full responsibilities of what the group is doing and in charge of the group. To be able to do this, the leader who is leading the group for the first time needs to learn effective way to become a great leader. As well as guiding them to produce creative ideas or new plans for the work to make it successful. Additionally, leader need to have aims and goals set to achieve during team work, try best to influence the group members, motivate members by assigning them to different variety tasks, instead of making them do same tasks that will make their motivation go down, show own skills to the members so leadership can be proved and gain more trust. However, a leader must overcome some barriers. First, cultural differences. As for this, leader must overcome cultural difference, as not all members are from same culture; it means that their acts of behaviours and opinions will differ and often will

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 is about people and people are messy. Each person has their own career aspirations, personal life issues, and motivators. It is incumbent on a leader to bring the individuals together, focus their efforts on a clear objective, provide them with the necessary training and equipment to achieve the objective, and coach them along the way as needed. The hard part is motivating each individual to want to reach the objective you have laid out for them. My definition of leadership is motivating others to accomplish common objectives.

During the past ten weeks, I have strengthened my concept of what constitutes effective leadership. Importantly, it is a leadership style that maximises the contributions of followers to achieve the desired outcomes for the organisation they represent. As Nanjundeswaraswamy & Swamy (2014, p.57) explains, effective leaders need to balance the drive to achieve a task with managing relationships. Therefore, it is essential for good leadership to not only focus on the task but develop, motivate and empower team members to strive for the achievement of task goals.

The most important lesson I have learned thus far in Leadership and, in fact, the MM DD program is the importance of focusing on your strengths rather than your weaknesses or purely your weaknesses. As far as I can remember whether it be in math class, playing the bass guitar or singing, teachers, tutors and mentors have always emphasized practicing to make up your deficiencies. To improve your score or performance, you had to practice doing problems that you were scoring lowest in or practice so that your deficiencies slowly became strengths. If I was scoring very high in English or History, I needed to focus on improving my scores in Chemistry and Math. Looking back on those experiences, which I also experienced in my undergraduate

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.