Assignment: Personal Leadership Philosophies
Assignment: Personal Leadership Philosophies
Many of us can think of leaders we have come to admire, be they historical figures, pillars of the industry we work in, or leaders we know personally. The leadership of individuals such as Abraham Lincoln and Margaret Thatcher has been studied and discussed repeatedly. However, you may have interacted with leaders you feel demonstrated equally competent leadership without ever having a book written about their approaches.
What makes great leaders great? Every leader is different, of course, but one area of commonality is the leadership philosophy that great leaders develop and practice. A leadership philosophy is basically an attitude held by leaders that acts as a guiding principle for their behavior. While formal theories on leadership continue to evolve over time, great leaders seem to adhere to an overarching philosophy that steers their actions.
What is your leadership philosophy? In this Assignment, you will explore what guides your own leadership.
To Prepare:
Identify two to three scholarly resources, in addition to this Module’s readings, that evaluate the impact of leadership behaviors in creating healthy work environments.
Reflect on the leadership behaviors presented in the three resources that you selected for review.
Reflect on your results of the CliftonStrengths Assessment, and consider how the results relate to your leadership traits.
Download your Signature Theme Report to submit for this Assignment.
The Assignment (2-3 pages):
Personal Leadership Philosophies
Develop and submit a personal leadership philosophy that reflects what you think are characteristics of a good leader. Use the scholarly resources on leadership you selected to support your philosophy statement. Your personal leadership philosophy should include the following:
A description of your core values.
A personal mission/vision statement.
An analysis of your CliftonStrengths Assessment summarizing the results of your profile
A description of two key behaviors that you wish to strengthen.
A development plan that explains how you plan to improve upon the two key behaviors you selected and an explanation of how you plan to achieve your personal vision. Be specific and provide examples.
Be sure to incorporate your colleagues’ feedback on your CliftonStrengths Assessment from this Module’s Discussion 2.
Note: Be sure to attach your Signature Theme Report to your Assignment submission. NOTE: the personal-values portion has to be yours — a fabricated leadership philosophy is transparently hollow to a grader and useless to you. Here is the conceptual apparatus to build a real one.
CORE SKILL: grounding a personal philosophy in THEORY and in a SELF-ASSESSMENT INSTRUMENT, rather than in sentiment.
THE THEORIES YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO DISTINGUISH:
— TRANSFORMATIONAL (Bass & Avolio): the “four I’s” — Idealized influence, Inspirational motivation, Intellectual stimulation, Individualized consideration. Consistently associated in the nursing literature with higher job satisfaction, lower burnout and turnover, healthier work environments, and better patient outcomes. This is the style the evidence favors, and saying WHY (it addresses meaning and growth, not just compliance) is better than merely naming it.
— TRANSACTIONAL: contingent reward and management-by-exception. Not worthless — it is what actually runs a schedule and enforces a standard — but insufficient for change and for engagement.
— LAISSEZ-FAIRE: absence of leadership. Consistently associated with the WORST outcomes, including higher burnout and error. Worth naming because students often mistake it for “empowering.”
— SERVANT LEADERSHIP (Greenleaf): the leader exists to serve the team; strong fit with nursing’s professional values.
— AUTHENTIC LEADERSHIP: self-awareness, relational transparency, balanced processing, internalized moral perspective. Heavily researched in nursing (Wong & Cummings) and linked to trust and to healthy work environments.
— EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE (Goleman): self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, social skill.
— SITUATIONAL leadership (Hersey & Blanchard): style should flex to follower readiness — which is a useful corrective to the idea that one style is always right.
THE ASSIGNMENT USUALLY REQUIRES: (1) a CLIFTONSTRENGTHS (or similar) self-assessment with your top strengths analyzed honestly — including how a strength becomes a LIABILITY when overused (a “Command” strength that becomes steamrolling; an “Empathy” strength that becomes an inability to hold people accountable). That reflexive move is what earns the top band; simply listing strengths does not; (2) your CORE VALUES, with justification; (3) your development plan with SPECIFIC, MEASURABLE goals and a timeline; (4) how you will apply this in practice.
CORE VALUES: name two and DEFINE what each looks like in behavior. “Integrity” is meaningless until you say “I will disclose an error even when no one would discover it.”
STRUCTURE: personal literacy/self-assessment → core values → mission/vision statement → analysis of your two strengths and two areas for growth → a concrete development plan.
Be specific and be honest — a philosophy that claims no weaknesses reads as either dishonest or unreflective, and both are worse than the weakness.
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