Numerous studies have identified holistic nurse leader’s characteristics and examine the ways through which nurse leaders can cultivate these characteristics (Christensen, Wilson & Edelman, 2018). As a leader, I could continue to develop my leadership qualities if I was able to recognize and strengthen my abilities. This week’s StrengthsFinder assessment revealed five themes that potentially define my leadership qualities as a leader. From the assessment, the five themes that emerge include individualization, responsibility, developer, arranger, and connectedness. In the facility’s emergency department, I carry the role of a clinical educator, and although the job may not be considered a leadership position, it is essential to recognize my abilities as an informal departmental leader. From the five themes, I would like to develop two leadership traits, namely connectedness and responsibility. Connectedness is vital because it provides the basis of faith that there is a link to everything and every situation. A leader with this strength believes there are only a few coincidences and that every event has a meaning (Gallup, 2019). By nurturing this strength, I could help individuals realize that teamwork and group efforts are essential in accomplishing tasks, a significant goal in a busy emergency department. On the other hand, responsibility is a personal leadership trait that makes me liable to take psychological ownership, whether small or large, or emergent situations. This builds a sense of commitment to serving other nurses and the patient’s body without having any excuses or rationalizations. Nursing requires core values that form the standard components in all clinical and educational nursing settings. The core values guide and motivate professional behaviors of nurses in their respective work areas. Pidgeon (2017), for instance, has enumerated various leadership core values and two that I would like to strengthen, namely the capacity to accept discrepancies in opinions and a commitment towards a caring-based leadership approach. The two core values will strongly influence the developer and arranger themes identified in the strength assessment report discussed. I believe that leaders are made and not born. Leadership is a learning process that a person acquires over time. I can be a leader by personal experience or simply by borrowing, through emulation, of leadership qualities and skills from other leaders. Ideally, one can achieve this when operating within an organizational culture that supports learning and orientation (Duggan et al., 2015). A good leader promotes the productivity of their team. On the same note, I would like to develop a leadership philosophy based on individualization and adaptability. Individualization as a theme and a personal leadership philosophy allows a leader to be intrigued by each person’s unique qualities. As an educator, I tend to see learners as a group of individuals with distinct traits. Consequently, I must pay more attention to their individual skills, attitudes, and interests to draw out their uniqueness and bring out their highest potential. On the other hand, adaptability is not viewing the future as a fixed destination but creating choices. In the emergency department, nurses must adapt to the department’s stressful situations. Showing my clinical staff that I can be adaptable to our unit’s various stressors as a role model could help them feel that they have a supportive leader. Adaptive leadership, as a component of transformational leadership, is a trait that one needs to cultivate because even stable situations can become unstable when challenges emerge (Broome & Marshall, 2021). That said, I believe that leadership is a mindset that a person develops as they grow in their career or line of work. Good leaders always try to strengthen their leadership qualities while working on the weak points. Nurse leaders should create an image that is easy to understand by the other nurses and be ready to inspire others to continue developing within their respective areas of service or levels pf leadership. Having taken the StrengthsFinder test, I now understand the importance of such assessments as through it I was able to understand my leadership strengths and weaknesses, and how I can better improve on the identified weaknesses.
Reference
Broome, M., & Marshall, E. S. (2021). Transformational leadership in nursing: From expert clinician to influential leader (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Springer. Christensen, S. S., Wilson, B. L., & Edelman, L. S. (2018). Can I relate? A review and guide for nurse managers in leading generations. Journal of Nursing Management, 26(6), 689–695. doi:10.1111/jonm.12601 Duggan, K., Aisaka, K., Tabak, R. G., Smith, C., Erwin, P., & Br
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