Acquiring Leadership Skills Essay

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Acquiring Leadership Skills

The multicratic, or participative, leadership style takes into consideration the opinions and thoughts of others (Five Styles of Leadership: Participative Leadership, 2013). This helps in utilizing team talent in collective decisions where the team as a whole takes accountability for the decisions. Followers become more motivated and more creative with less contributions that give a higher quality of input. The participative leadership style enables knowledge of where training is needed, develops teamwork that brings new ideas, evaluates performance for improvement, gives encouragement for both on the job and work/life balance, and enables new knowledge from member experiences.

Working as a healthcare aide in a continuing care center for the past 17 years, I was awarded the responsibility of orientating new healthcare aide workers. Where each institution has formed their own policies and procedures, the participative leadership style enabled me to gain input for training measures. It allowed me to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the worker to determine what areas they needed the most training and orientation. It also is a way to gain valuable input into getting to know the worker on an individual basis and their culture. Getting to know their culture helps in determining their beliefs and values.

The participative leadership style allowed for ideas to utilize member strengths to develop better teamwork for higher productivity as well as resident and worker satisfaction. Workers gain more motivation and creativity in performing tasks and residents become more satisfied in the care they receive. Workers get more motivated when they feel their efforts are being acknowledged in meaningful ways.

The participative leadership style has allowed for times of reflection to evaluate job performance and evaluation for performance improvement. Asking questions to arouse conversation and discussion allows for evaluation of the performance of a task. This is another way to gain input on training needs and individual strengths that can be utilized in team development efforts.

There are advantages and disadvantages to working with the same residents on a continual basis. On one hand, it allows the opportunity to get to know them on a personal basis and aides in better meeting individual needs. On the other hand, illnesses can change personalities and cause situations to be difficult causing misunderstandings when personalities change. The participative leadership style provides input that gives encouragement to others.

At the same time, the input could help others in gaining work/life balance. Sometimes when life gets in the way, it is necessary to gain input from other team members who may have had the same situations and experiences. Learning from each other, can add value and encouragement in gaining appropriate work/life balances.

When times are difficult and challenging, the participative leadership style allows for a deeper experience in learning, not only from the event, but also from other member experiences. New members may have lots of experience in other institutions with varying experiences with events in the people they care for. Even if the participative leader has not had a particular experience, some else may have and have learned proper ways to make a difficult task more efficient.

Leadership is required under the code of ethics and standards of practice by every nurse, whether in a management role or not (Code of Ethics and Standards of Practice, 2008). Nurses have the responsibility of providing and advocating for safe, competent, and ethical care. Every nurse is held accountable for the care given to patients, residents, or clients they are assigned to care for. The care is required to be given with integrity, compassion, and dignity. The rights, values, and beliefs of others are required to be respected as well as confidential information.

Nurses are also required to promote the profession through excellence in mentorship. This involves other nurses and healthcare workers. Healthcare aides work under the direction of all nurses, therefore, it is important for nurses to mentor team development and performance in all care given to assigned patients.

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This would also involve assessing their own practices and maintaining competence through lifelong learning. Lifelong learning not only involves training sessions, but learning from other's experiences as well.

The requirement of fostering respectful collaborative relationships also plays a part of the leadership role of every nurse. The relationships that nurses maintain with other healthcare workers, whether it is another nurse or an aide, plays a big part in the care given to patients. Relationships provide proper communication that enables the abilities to meet patient needs and values in meaningful ways. It also allows for the maintenance of standards of conduct requirement.

"Leadership can be developed and implemented at the bedside" (Valentine, 2002). Staff nurses have the ability to influence sustainable patient outcomes and high levels of productivity because they work at the bedside and are at the forefront of healthcare. This gives them more knowledge and experiences concerning what best addresses patient needs and ideas concerning the delivery of quality care. Being at the bedside enables nurses to be equipped to influence decisions about how the facility can best deliver care and provide for better patient outcomes and satisfaction.

Practical nurses can also have a big impact on causes to change society (Larson, n.d.). Illness, mortality, and morbidity rates are all causes for societal change. Effective communications that convinces others to follow can impact societal change to reduce illness, mortality rates, and morbidity rates among societal members. The practical nurse has a huge impact on these causes with effective patient teaching.

The practical nurse can have impact on assisting leadership in getting things done. The practical nurse can communicate to convince others that what a leader is wanting is the right thing to do. For example, suppose the leader is wanting changes in procedures to provide for better quality of care and prevent pressure sores. The practical nurse can communicate to convince other healthcare workers on the procedures to implement the pressure sore prevention plan for better patient outcomes.

The practical nurse can also assist with financial management efforts in keeping costs to a minimum. The practical nurse has ability to build team performance to cut waste in payroll and supply resources. Encouraging positive self-esteem, motivating for higher productivity levels, and empowering staff are ways to promote teamwork (Smith, 2011). In so doing, tasks are completed in more effective, efficient ways. Encouraging team members to only take the proper amount of supplies to a patient's room can cut waste in supply resources.

New nurses can develop basic leadership principles by interacting with established nurse leaders (Valentine, 2002). Interacting with nurse managers and other established nurses will equip me in implementing leadership principles with other healthcare workers in providing bedside care and providing patient teaching for societal change. This would provide me the ability to learn from other's experience in what ways have worked well and mistakes to avoid.

Working with healthcare aides can enable me to learn to build teamwork and utilize the strengths of others. Listening to others gives ideas for improvement and new experiences in developing change for better outcomes. It can also give input on how to obtain higher productivity levels. Listening can also help in gaining valuable information in values and beliefs that help to motivate team members. This would help in building collaborative relationships as well. It would also help in building respect for others and the diversity that others bring to the group.

Being honest and enabling open communication with healthcare workers assisting me with patients will enable me to learn better techniques for conflict resolution and delegating tasks. Honesty and open communication builds integrity and enables others more trust that can build a more collaborative relationship. The collaborative relationship helps in motivating others and builds more satisfaction of tasks performed because feedback could be provided for reflection and learning from mistakes without the fear of punishment.….....

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