The requirement of good leadership in social care is compelling. There are increasing numbers of people living with long-term difficult social conditions and proper leadership is important in order to help the members of the social care team to provide quality support to these individuals towards an independent life. Leaders are also important into engaging and motivating the social care staffs so that they can overcome compassion fatigue and indulge in working for the betterment of the people (Goodwin, 2013). The following is a self-reflection paper based on my leadership qualities, leadership styles and leadership comfort. The self reflection paper will mainly highlight the leadership styles, qualities and comfort which I feel I lag behind and the steps which I am planning to undertake in order to overcome such gaps in my leadership traits.
Leadership Qualities
Conscientious is a personality trait that reflects the degree at which a person is responsible, dependable, perseverant and achievement driven (Magidson et al., 2014). According to Hudson and Fraley (2015), conscientiousness is not single unitary entity but is regarded as conglomerate of specific traits. I personally feel that conscientiousness is a socially prescribed norm that is used to control impulse. As a conscientiousness leader I am task focused, punctual and scrupulous. However, I think I need to work on my conscientious skills so that my team members feel more dependable and relaxed while working under my active supervision. Their dependability and trust over me will help them to perform better thereby achieving their target. This will again aid to my conscientiousness leadership skills. At times I lack in the legal and ethical aspects of the rules in the workplace. This I think I will overcome with time because as I get more accustomed with the overall work process, my knowledge about ethical and legal consideration of the workplace will increase. However, I will also take extra effort to study about the legal and the ethical concerns so that I can bridge the gaps in my knowledge.
Caring leadership skills is grounded in the practice of “leaping-in” and “leaping-ahead” as the principal mode of intervention in the workplace related affairs (Kautz, 2013). Caring leadership skills is guided by core values which are strictly abided by me and this includes leading with kindness, compassion and equanimity; generation of faith and hope via co-creation; active participation in innovation with a specific insight towards reflection and ultimate wisdom. I also purposely create protected place when my team mates feel secure enough to discuss their grievances and difficulties. This is how I aim to increase the mutual respect within my team mates. I also embody an environment care which trust trusting relationships with self and others. This kind of atmosphere creates positive energy and thereby increasing overall proficiency of work. Since social and healthcare create challenging work environment, development of compassion fatigue is must and thus practising caring leadership skills help to overcome the ill-effects of compassion fatigue. I will further increase my caring leadership quality via working on my intrapersonal communication skills.
I think to be a good leader, one need to be good observer. It is the proper observation skills that help the leader to understand the core skills and competencies of a team member or the underlying grievances about the fellow subordinates. In the social and healthcare domain there is huge amount of work pressure and thus a good leader needs to be good observer in order to figure out the loop holes in the system and thereby ironing those holes. I as a observant leader observe the entire workflow very closely in order to spot any gaps.
Leadership styles
Leader- Vs member-centred
My personal preference between member and the leader is the member. This approach is further supported by servant leadership style. This leadership styles considers the need of the employee first and commits help of the employees in order to develop further expertise and overall improvement of the performance (Parris & Peachey, 2013). I mainly give preferences to the members than that of the leaders this is because via giving importance to the members the efficiency and happiness of the entire team can be increase. This also helps to increase the engagement and accountability with the team along with the generation of dedication and confidence. It also helps to decrease employee turnover and this in turn maximize the profit of the organisations. However, giving preference to the members before the leaders decreases the authority of the leaders over the team members and this creates unrest within the entire team. The preference provided to the team-members at times are misused such that the team-members tend to do whatever they feel like thereby creating an undisciplined atmosphere and decreasing the overall productivity.
Process- Vs outcome oriented
I generally prefer outcome oriented leadership style. According to Giessner et al. (2013), under outcome oriented leadership style, the employees perform better at their highest level via setting challenging goals and giving importance over excellence. In order to promote outcome oriented leadership styles I try to improve the confidence level among the employees and thereby helping them to overshoot their target. Since health and social care involves large number of people, abiding by an ordered structure are at times difficult and here comes the importance of outcome oriented leadership styles. However, outcome oriented leadership styles can lead to loss of synergy. Moreover, outcome oriented leadership styles at times might create frustration among the team members and they might feel continuously pressurised. However, distributing proper rewards and recognition can overcome such challenges.
Solo- Vs co-leadership
My preference in this field is co-leadership style. In co-leadership styles subordinates of the main team leader is involved in the decision making process. However, the main leader holds the final responsibility but he or she is known to distribute the authority to the other people (Hendriks & Karsten, 2014). I think the main advantage of co-leadership style is it increases the employees’ job satisfaction and at the same time encourages the team members to participate in the strategic thinking process for the betterment of the overall service or the organisation. The disadvantage of co-leadership surfaces during emergency situations when the main leader is required to take certain autocratic decision and the co-leaders find that approach very directive and thereby leading to the generation of conflict.
Leadership Comfort
Dealing with group silence
I think am very comfortable in dealing group silence. Once I throw a question towards a group I expect some sort of reactions or reply and if there is an awkward silence then it makes me uncomfortable or projects myself as non-existent entity in the group conversation. However, in order to be an effective leader, holding small group meetings is a must and for that I need to strategically deal with group silence. In order to deal with group silence, I will start sharing my transparent story on that particular topic and my honestly and vulnerability might encourage some group members to speak up to share their won share of ideas. Even while sharing my story did not help, I will call by the name of the group member directly to share their views.
Dealing with intense display of emotions
I think intense display of emotions can damage the reputation of the leader within the team. Leaders who fail to manage his or her emotions can wreak intense havoc over the organisation and thereby seriously damaging the morale of the employee. I think it is not necessary for the leaders to be an unemotional robot. But in the domain of sharing I emotions, I feel I must restrict at certain level. Minimal or required display of emotions will help me to enhance relationships with the team members. In order to control my emotions further, I prefer to execute what is right instead to what is popular. According to Arnold et al. (2015), at times leaders are tempted to take popular decision as these will help to get instant relief or feelings from handling difficult situations. However, it is the role of a good leader to overcome the most popular decision and opt for taking the right decision. For this I think it requires a great deal of self-confidence, compose and comfort. I feel I score more than average in this domain.
Dealing with member-to-member conflict
Conflict resolution is a daily occurrence at work and this disrupt the momentum of a leader (Saeed et al., 2014). I feel managing conflict is extremely tricky than going for confrontation. The workplace is fuelled with numerous concurrent agendas that any of these agendas can affect anyone team member giving rise of conflict. In order to effective manage the conflict among team members I will never try to avoid the tension as they may generate internal disruption among the team members. While confronting the tension, I will neutralize of minimize the conflict and thereby not allowing it to grow. I will try not to create artificial untrustworthy environments rather I will directly work and conserves will each of the team members separately and in groups in order to resolve the conflict from a neutral position.
Dealing with reluctant members
In order to deal with reluctant members, I prefer employee motivation and encouragement via giving rewards and acknowledgement. Rewards and acknowledgement helps to generate interest and thereby increasing job satisfaction and employee motivation (Saeed et al., 2014). Moreover, for the reluctant members setting small or easily achievable helps to generate interest and I strictly practice the same. Saeed et al. (2014) are of the opinion that the giving clear and behavioral feedbacks and setting strict consequences of events if the things are not rectified are at times required to be undertaken if light or friendly approach fail to be effective in managing the reluctant employees. I also feel that at times a leader need to strict and harsh and telling the bitter truth is helpful in revealing the actual consequences of the workplace negligence.
Conclusion
Thus from the above personal reflection, I want to conclude that I need to work on few of the notable leadership qualities like conscientious and this will help to take me neutral decision which are legally and ethically correct. In the leadership styles I prefer member centred leadership, outcome oriented leadership plans and co-leadership plans. In leadership comfort, I lack in handling group silence and handling conflict between the team members. However, on contrary, I would like to highlight that I score high in dealing with intense display of emotions and handling the reluctant members. Overall I am planning to work on my pitfalls in order to evolve as an effective leader in the social care
References
Arnold, K. A., Connelly, C. E., Walsh, M. M., & Martin Ginis, K. A. (2015). Leadership styles, emotion regulation, and burnout. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 20(4), 481.
Giessner, S. R., van Knippenberg, D., van Ginkel, W., & Sleebos, E. (2013). Team-oriented leadership: The interactive effects of leader group prototypicality, accountability, and team identification. Journal of Applied Psychology, 98(4), 658.
Goodwin, N. (2013). Leadership in health care: a European perspective. Routledge.
Hendriks, F., & Karsten, N. (2014). Theory of democratic leadership. P.’t Hart & R. Rhodes (Eds.), Oxford handbook of political leadership, 41-56.
Hudson, N. W., & Fraley, R. C. (2015). Volitional personality trait change: Can people choose to change their personality traits?. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 109(3), 490.
Kautz, D. D. (2013). Teaching the core values of caring leadership. International Journal for Human Caring, 17(4), 43-51.
Magidson, J. F., Roberts, B. W., Collado-Rodriguez, A., & Lejuez, C. W. (2014). Theory-driven intervention for changing personality: Expectancy value theory, behavioral activation, and conscientiousness. Developmental psychology, 50(5), 1442.
Parris, D. L., & Peachey, J. W. (2013). A systematic literature review of servant leadership theory in organizational contexts. Journal of business ethics, 113(3), 377-393.
Saeed, T., Almas, S., Anis-ul-Haq, M., & Niazi, G. S. K. (2014). Leadership styles: relationship with conflict management styles. International Journal of Conflict Management, 25(3), 214-225
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