Leadership plays an integral role in the function of all fields and systems, and public health is no exception. The public health field is challenging to manage and navigate, but a collaborative and supportive team environment can help immensely. A person in the role of a leader can become the final straw that either breaks the team or leads it to success and what style of leadership they apply plays a deciding role in this factor. Various leadership theories on the quality and application of leadership skills have existed in the history of public healthcare. Still, it is their integration into a real-life application that evaluates their effectiveness. In this personal leadership portrait, I will examine my traits and characteristics and how they correlate with my ability to be a leader. While every member of an organization contributes to the overall picture, it is the leader who is the most responsible for a team’s success.
Leadership Role
Public healthcare is an essential part of human society and determines the well-being of entire nations. In modern-day healthcare, leadership styles can vary, and healthcare systems prioritize those styles that they deem most efficient. A classic model of leadership that focused on praising positive behavior while punishing negative actions has been replaced with more modern styles. Complex leadership has become a widely applied style, as a leader needs to be adaptive to the constant changes in their work (Hargett et al., 2017). Transformational leadership that has emerged in the 1980s still has a wide application, as charismatic and intuitive leaders lead by example and inspire their workers to succeed (Hargett et al., 2017). Different leaders can choose different styles depending on what they deem more effective in their work.
As a future healthcare worker, my responsibilities will involve taking care of patients and people working in my team. I will need to be aware of their situation, their needs, and their problems and help them reach their full potential. It is, therefore, not surprising that managing a team can be a challenging task, as it requires specific skills that increase the team’s productivity rather than decrease it (Hackworth et al., 2018). Thus, it becomes essential that I become keenly aware of my characteristics and leadership style and whether it is helpful or detrimental to my work.
Personal Leadership Portrait
To examine how well I perform as a leader, I need to look at my skills, abilities, and traits related to leadership and analyze them. As a leader, I possess the following qualities and characteristics: I’m a charismatic leader who has developed a strong empathy for others, thus I am a very socially and situationally aware person. I can accurately apply my emotional intelligence and react appropriately, even in stressful situations. It also applies to my social skills, as I understand the social dynamics among people, whether patients or co-workers. It allows me to choose my course of action, foreseeing potential consequences correctly. Healthcare systems are highly complex, with a vital human element, and reading the social situation with precision can save workers a lot of time and stress. These skills require another trait that is essential for socially busy work: empathy.
My high empathy allows me to recognize the emotional state of people around me, and it helps me understand their needs and issues. An ability like this is essential for a healthcare worker, whether in a leadership role or not. It facilitates interprofessional communications and creates better relations between team members. Patients can struggle to vocalize their problems properly, and read between the lines to see what is bothering them is extremely helpful. Reading other workers’ emotional states is also essential as it allows me to see if they are burnt out, overstressed, or aggravated (Hackworth et al., 2018). Thus, I can foresee potential conflicts or disagreements and help my fellow healthcare workers deal with their stress and channel their energy more productive (Farrell, 2017). At the same time, empathy can be a double-edged sword, as letting one be overwhelmed by their sympathetic feelings for others can cause anxiety and distress. It is crucial to balance being empathetic and keeping one’s emotions in check, especially as a leader, and I believe that I have learned to do so in practice.
When it comes to leadership style, I characterize myself as a transformational leader. I like to lead by example and motivate my workers this way. It helps that I am a charismatic person, and people tend to trust me and like my deposition. I can establish an amicable conversation with other people, easing anxiety and stress, which is immensely helpful in healthcare work. It also makes me a likable leader that people want to follow and a medical worker that patients are inclined to trust. When combined with my natural empathy, it helps me quickly establish a connection with other people, making work easier for people involved (Sfantou et al., 2017). As a leader, I rarely struggle to find common ground with other workers, thus making our cooperation more effective. Nevertheless, I still aim to improve my work: while leading by example and recognizing workers’ personal motivations is helpful, it also essential to focus on a bigger picture. Focusing on the long-term goals and overall picture that affects more than my team is something I plan to implement more into my leadership style in the future.
Theory and Practice
A scholar-practitioner is a person who has a deep understanding of theory but also aims to apply the theory in practice. They aim to maximize the effectiveness of their work by experimenting with the theoretical knowledge they have gathered over the years. Combining theory and practice can be a critical tool: separated, they represent two parts of a whole, together they help one see the bigger picture (Simón & Ferreiro, 2018). Nevertheless, scholar-practitioners face a lot of struggles in their work. What works on paper does not always transition well in a real-life application. Scholar-practitioner must apply critical thinking to their work. A scholar-practitioner needs to analyze the existing system for flaws and mistakes that can damage the work process. Still, critical thinking is also necessary to determine whether their theory is effective in practice. Applying theoretical knowledge is essential to any profession. A scholar-practitioner is a prime example of a person who has both theoretical understandings and knows how to use them in practice.
When it comes to leadership, the application of theory to practice is a valuable tool. A leader who is also a scholar-practitioner can determine what changes must be done to help their team. They can also analyze and see if their approach needs alteration, what kind of alteration, and how it should be applied. Critical thinking is a skill every leader needs to possess in order to be successful in their role, and I have practiced my critical thinking skills both in theory and practice to improve my leadership style.
Ethical Environment and Diversity at Workplace
An ethical environment is an environment in which human needs are not overshadowed by other issues, demands, or standards. Ethical leadership means that a leader values their team’s effort and abilities and does not compromise their well-being for the sake of a result. At the same time, an ethical leader also should not prioritize their personal and team gain over patients and know when to draw the line when their team is being unethical. The public health field’s long-term goal is to help and improve the quality of life of people, and it does so by focusing on their health. It begins with a team of healthcare workers, and the leader has to maintain a healthy environment, both physically and psychologically. Because healthcare work is stressful, challenging, and time-consuming, it becomes, therefore, one of a leader’s priorities to keep the environment safe and welcoming to the people involved. Creating a diverse and inclusive environment is one of the methods of doing that, as it makes people feel included in the team and therefore does their best to help the team’s effort.
As a leader, it is my responsibility to make sure that people feel accepted, as I am the person responsible for welcoming them to the team. Diversity is essential for another factor, as well: people from different parts of society can bring new perspectives that enrich the team’s understanding of people. Modern-day work makes people work with people from different parts of society, with diverse backgrounds, histories, and needs. Their needs can be drastically different and depend on these factors, and providing them with proper treatment relies on a healthcare worker’s understanding of that. Because I work in public health, I interact and work with a diverse variety of people, and I need to understand them to help them. Having team members from similar backgrounds can help me understand others better and create a healthy and welcoming environment for both workers and patients. This is why diversity and inclusion are essential to keep in mind when building an ethical work environment.
Creating a diverse and inclusive work environment also improves relations between the community and employees: people begin to trust the system that respects their needs and differences. People coming from smaller, marginalized communities may feel unsafe in the healthcare system due to the long history of unfair treatment. This is detrimental to their well-being, as they may neglect health issues that will negatively impact them if left untreated (Gomez & Bernet, 2019). While this issue is slowly becoming less present, it still needs more attention, and as a leader, I intend to make my workplace diverse, welcoming, and healthy to improve the lives of both patients and co-workers.
Conclusion
Leadership plays a crucial role in the public health field, whether one leads a small team or a large organization. As a leader, I possess a lot of skills that are needed to maintain effective work. I’m an empathetic and charismatic person, thus making people tend to trust me and my judgment. My keen social and situational awareness allows me to adapt to most situations and people. As a transformational leader, I aim to lead by example and motivate other workers by examining their needs and abilities. I aim to make my workplace diverse and inclusive, accepting people from various parts of the world to create a healthy and ethical environment. While I need to learn even more and improve my skills even further, I am determined to use my abilities as a leader to their fullest to contribute to the public health field.
References
Farrell, M. (2017). Leadership reflections: Leadership skills for knowledge management. Journal of Library Administration, 57(6), 674-682. Web.
Gomez, L. E., & Bernet, P. (2019). Diversity improves performance and outcomes. Journal of the National Medical Association, 111(4), 383-392. Web.
Hackworth, J., Steel, S., Cooksey, E., DePalma, M., & Kahn, J. A. (2018). Faculty members’ self-awareness, leadership confidence, and leadership skills improve after an evidence-based leadership training program. The Journal of pediatrics, 199, 4-6. Web.
Hargett, C. W., Doty, J. P., Hauck, J. N., Webb, A. M., Cook, S. H., Tsipis, N. E., Neumann, J. A., Andolsek, K. M., & Taylor, D. C. (2017). Developing a model for effective leadership in healthcare: a concept mapping approach. Journal of healthcare leadership, 9, 69–78. Web.
Sfantou, D. F., Laliotis, A., Patelarou, A. E., Sifaki-Pistolla, D., Matalliotakis, M., & Patelarou, E. (2017). Importance of leadership style towards quality of care measures in healthcare settings: a systematic review. In Healthcare, 5(4), 73. Web.
Simón, C., & Ferreiro, E. (2018). Workforce analytics: A case study of scholar–practitioner collaboration. Human Resource Management, 57(3), 781-793. Web.