NURS 6730: Public Health Nursing Leadership | Week 7

Leadership at the organizational level requires that the public health nurse leader not only use the new skills and tools required to lead an agency, but also continue to refine the skills and tools developed at the personal and team levels. One crucial skill needed to lead public health organizations in an ever-changing society is adaptive leadership. As you learned in Week 2, adaptive leadership is the practice of mobilizing people to tackle tough challenges and thrive. This involves thinking about issues from a new perspective and identifying innovative solutions to tackle these challenges. It also involves identifying new partnerships that can be formed to create these innovative solutions. Adaptive leadership is an integral component of adaptive organizations. Those organizations are more likely to survive and even thrive in a chaotic environment.

Public health nurse leaders also must possess skills when using data to further the mission of their organizations and promote the health of the populations they serve. PHN leaders are surrounded by multiple sources of data; however, the data can only become useful when synthesized with other available information by a skilled public health leader to produce contextually grounded knowledge. Thus, knowledge management relates to how information gets used within the context of an organization’s strategic vision.

Strategic planning is the process by which an organization identifies its future goals and then determines the strategies and resources needed to move forward toward the realization of those goals and the ultimate achievement of the organization’s vision. The public health leader must collaborate with other members of his or her organization in the strategic planning process.

This week you will explore the qualities of adaptive leadership, not only as they apply to the public health nurse leader, but also those qualities that must be nurtured in order to create an adaptive organization. You will also gain a better understanding of the process of strategic planning and the role of the nurse leader in facilitating that process.

Learning Objectives

Students will:

• Analyze adaptive leadership qualities in public health organizations (D)
• Analyze data use in public health organizations(D)
• Analyze experiences with strategic planning steps (D)
• Analyze public-private partnerships (D)
• Compare organizational leadership components (D)
• Analyze contributions of personal leadership and team-level leadership to organizational leadership (J)
• Analyze alignment between leadership competencies and essential skills needed for organizational leadership (J)
• Create detailed time logs (P)
• Analyze Practicum Experience problems, issues, or situations (P)
• Apply evidence-based concepts, principles, and theories to Practicum Experiences (P)

Discussion: The Third Level of Leadership: Organizational Leadership Assessment

Barbara Mosely, Director of Public Health Nursing at Welland County Health Department, has just learned that a long-time strategic partnership with a community health center is at risk due to new legislation that will reduce funding and increase the chances of the health center having to cut staff and services in the next year. This change would negatively impact the agency’s staff and the community’s health. She decides to organize a meeting at the organizational leadership level immediately. In preparation for the meeting, she reviews the agency’s strategic plan and pulls data that shows their clients’ dependency on the community health center partnership and their desire to dedicate a significant portion of the meeting to address the best way to communicate what this change would mean for their staff and the community that’s served.

For this Discussion, you interview at least one organizational leader at your practicum site to gain insights into how the key concepts covered this week—adaptive leadership, knowledge management, strategic planning, and partnerships—are applied in a real-world context.

To prepare:

• Review this week’s Resources.
• Utilize the help of your mentor to identify one or more people to speak with regarding leadership at your practicum placement organization.
• Download the Interview Guide from the Resources.

By Day 3

Post a summary of your interview(s) that addresses the following areas:

• Adaptive Leadership
  • What qualities of adaptive leadership are present in the organization? Explain, and provide examples of at least two qualities.
• Knowledge Management
  • How is data used in the organization?
• Strategic Planning
  • Describe an experience with at least two steps from Bryson’s 10-step strategic planning model in Rowitz (2018).
• Public–Private Partnerships
  • What partnerships exist between the organization and other organizations and groups? What benefits do they offer? Why were certain partnerships chosen?

Read a selection of your colleagues’ responses.

By Day 6

Respond to at least two of your colleagues by comparing information about one of the areas of leadership you shared with the information you gathered from your placement organization. How does the comparison strengthen your understanding of the organizational leadership area and/or what questions does it raise?