Self Evaluation Leadership, Assessment Example

Abstract

Leadership is one of the most important aspects of any organization and community because it helps guide, provide structure, motivation and organization for the company or group.  The goal of any leader should be to properly motivate followers to engage in productive and efficient tasks towards achieving specific goals.  Through defining leadership and analyzing the leadership styles of Winston Churchill and Martha Rogers in non-nursing and nursing roles, respectively, a self-analysis of leadership potential can be conducted.  It is determined that as a young nursing professional, it is important to utilize charisma, communication and to lead by example to gain the trust of co-workers before attempting to utilize Rogers’ guidance strategies.

Introduction

Leadership is one of the most important aspects of any organization and community because it helps guide, provide structure, motivation and organization for the company or group.  The goal of any leader should be to properly motivate followers to engage in productive and efficient tasks towards achieving specific goals.  It is first important to establish a universal definition and understanding of leadership to effectively evaluate many nursing and non-nursing leaders.  The leadership and followership experiences I have faced have played an important role in my understanding of leadership, and the examples of Winston Churchill and Martha Rogers as leaders provide for an opportunity to evaluate and enhance my own leadership qualities.

Description of Leadership

There are many specific characteristics that can be combined to create a holistic definition of leadership.  According to modern thinking, “Leadership is a process by which a person influences others to accomplish an objective and directs the organization in a way that makes it more cohesive and coherent.  Leaders carry out this process by applying their leadership attributes, such as beliefs, values, ethics, character, knowledge, and skills” (Clark, 1997).  This concept of leadership attributes suggests that not everyone can be a leader and only certain individuals have the ability to adequately lead.  While a leader must have a specific set of core values, a leader must possess the ability to communicate the leader’s vision, to be trustworthy and to make sound and timely decisions (Clark, 1997).  Finally, a true leader should also be able to provide motivation to his followers to encourage them to perform necessary actions and to give the followers a sense of direction.

Winston Churchill is often viewed as an individual that became a necessary military leader during one of the world’s most horrific military events in history.  His ability as a leader is often credited with such leadership traits as energy, self-belief, vision and decisiveness in his actions: “He questioned all aspects of military policy, obliging his commanders to justify their strategies in great detail” (Churchill: The war leader, n.d.).  Churchill’s charisma and communication skills also provided an excellent advantage for Great Britain, especially when negotiating with the USA: “If he couldn’t get America to fight, then at least he could persuade Roosevelt to give material help” (Churchill: The war leader, n.d.).  In a non-nursing role, Winston Churchill epitomizes many of the necessary characteristics that a leader must have in order to be effective.

Martha Rogers has redefined the nursing profession and nursing procedures through providing a leadership from her experiences in the profession.  Rogers is considered an original thinker in nursing for efforts of thinking and synthesizing and re-synthesizing knowledge in nursing to a complete new thought.  Such traits often form the backbone of any exceptional leader (Marriner-Tomey & Raile-Alligood, 2006).  Furthermore, most exceptional leaders are able to motivate and influence their followers towards their goals.  Leaders also provide their followers with guidance and support to efficiently achieve their goals.  Martha Rogers has helped many nurses identify objectives for their nursing careers and the ways that they can best achieve them (Feldman, 2008).  Through her extensive theories on nursing, she ensured that the paths one must take to achieve their objective were clear as well as allowed nurses to provide competent care to their patients.  Her numerous publications on nursing topics and theories have simplified effective care giving, immortalizing her in the world of nursing.

Self-Analysis of Leadership Potential

Given my leadership abilities, I am more like Winston Churchill than Martha Rogers.  Rogers is able to provide leadership and guidance to nursing professionals, but she sometimes lacks the skills to properly motivate her followers.  Her success is that the individuals she works with inside the nursing profession are already motivated.  I have not always been so lucky, so I have needed to utilize my charisma, energy and communication skills to express the goals of our team and then to motivate the teammates to keep working hard.  These are skills that Winston Churchill utilized in a non-nursing leadership capacity.  Both individuals were successful in their leadership efforts, but they had two completely different leadership styles.  My leadership style fits my personality and my leadership attributes.  I still need to work on providing better guidance to followers and taking on more of a mentor role, but it is first necessary to ensure that the followers are motivated first.

It is important to continue to utilize leadership techniques and strategies to build upon my current leadership skills.  Due to my lack of experience in the nursing profession, it may be difficult to provide appropriate levels of guidance for co-workers in the field.  This aspect of leadership appears to work best for Rogers because of her extensive knowledge and experience within the field.  However, I need to continue to build upon my motivation skills and communicating the goals of the team so that my team can learn to trust me.  Once I have established trust with my co-workers, I can become much more effective as a leader.  Therefore, the leadership potential for me is very high, but will only continue to grow and be effective as I grow and evolve within the nursing profession.  Whenever there are opportunities to lead, I must take advantage of them.  I can volunteer for leadership roles to manage any special projects to begin leading by example with my team.  As I continue to build their trust, I can work to keep them motivated and develop my leadership skills along the way.

Summary

Leadership is an important component to the success of any organization or team that has a common goal.  There are specific traits and characteristics that are important for leaders to be effective, and many of these are shown through the analysis of Winston Churchill and Martha Rogers as leaders.  Non-nursing and nursing leadership are similar, yet still different because each situation proposes a different set of difficulties or obstacles for leaders to overcome.  In the nursing profession, I can utilize my current leadership skills to help motivate my co-workers.  However, the biggest source of leadership that I can provide as a young nursing professional is to lead by example and continue to work hard in every aspect of the position.  As I build trust with the team, I can utilize this trust to effectively become a leader.  This is an ongoing process and I must continue to use the leadership strategies discussed herein to build upon my current abilities.

References

Clark, D. (1997). Concepts of Leadership. Retrieved February 10, 2010, from http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/leader/leadcon.html

Churchill: Leader and Statesman (n.d.). The Churchill Center and Museum at the Cabinet

War Rooms, London. Retrieved February 10, 2010, from http://www.winstonchurchill.org/learn/biography/biography/churchill-leader-and- statesman

Feldman, H. R. (2008).  Feldman, H. R. & Jaffe-Ruiz, M (ed). Nursing leadership: a concise encyclopedia. New York: Springer Publishing Company.

Marriner-Tomey, A.  & Raile-Alligood (2006). Nursing theorists and their work. New York: Elsevier Health Sciences.