A Comprehensive Assessment of Qualities, Skills, and Style in the Context

Introduction

A quality leader is important because they ensure the team members have high energy in performing the job to their best and develop confidence in them to take positive approach to overcome barriers towards their responsibility at work. The understanding of the level of qualities and skills present in an individual as a leader is important because it makes the person become familiar with their efficiency and develop confidence in leading others. In this assignment, the leadership assessment tools such as NHS leadership Framework, Johari Window Model and Emotional Intelligence Assessment is to be used for examining the qualities and skills in leadership. Thereafter, the leadership style followed by me is to be critically analysed. The experience of working as a leader in a team and impact of the current leadership abilities in future as a District Nurse practitioner is to be explained. Moreover, critical analysis of personal leadership ability is to be discussed.

Analysis of Qualities and Skills in Leadership

The critical analysis of personal skills and qualities in leadership is to be executed by following NHS Leadership Framework Model. According to NHS Leadership Framework, leadership in health and social care is delivering enhanced quality care services to patients by showing personal qualities, collaborating with others, managing services, improving services, setting direction, creating vison and delivering strategy (leadershipacademy.nhs.uk, 2018). The model mentions that to demonstrate effective personal qualities of being a leader, the individual requires to show high self-awareness of own values and principles, manage clam self, continue personal development and act with integrity (leadershipacademy.nhs.uk, 2012). I personally reflect on my own principles and values to influence positive behaviour and impact others while leading them for any task. I also remain calm as well as focused in pressure and plan to manage the workload while following commitment to deliver high standard support. In addition, I always seek opportunities to learn as well as develop in practical and personal work along with act as an honest person who shows inclusive attitude towards others and execute actions when ethics or morals are compromised. This indicates I demonstrate enhanced personal qualities of a leader in leading people and patients in the care environment.

The NHS Framework mention good leaders to be capable of developing partnership at work, building and managing positive relationship, work with teams for service improvisation and encouraged contribution of the team members (Awwad et al., 2020). In my experience, I have always focused on identifying opportunities to work collaboratively so that through shared information and resources an effective partnership and networking with colleagues and peers is built to deliver improved services to patients. Moreover, I have supported and executed clear and open communication with subordinates and peers along with actively listened to their account and ideas which helped me in valuing their opinions and frame as well as maintain positive relationship at work. However, I do not actively seek views and contributions from others in quick decision-making situation as I feel it would slower the decision-making process but has acted to encourage others in resolving conflict of interest at work with my assistance or on their own. It indicates I support partial contribution from others. I support working as a team because I acknowledge and appreciate the idea of collaborative efforts of others to work with greater efficiency. Thus, it informs that I show enhanced ability to work with others which is another key characteristic in leadership.

The NHS Framework mentions appropriate planning and managing resources, people and performance is needed quality of good leaders (Quinn, 2017). I have shown enhanced ability to assess the benefits and risk of available care delivery option before planning the care. I have also found to effectively manage resources and people along with performance by taking actions way resources are to be used and responsibilities are to be performed by me and team members. This has helped me to show enhanced ability to manage services. An effective leader can create change in people’s life by delivering them improved services (Nightingale, 2020). I have focussed on improving services for which I critically evaluated each situation to plan and safely deliver the care and facilitated transformation when required to deliver quality support. However, I often expressed implementation of my own innovative ideas and skills for improvement in making quick decisions for care but supported encouragement of idea inclusion of innovation and improvement from others when long-term plan of delivering quality services is raised. This indicates I have effective leadership quality of supporting improved services in care to be delivered.

The NHS framework mentions that setting of effective direction to implement change and effective communication of vision of change to subordinates are required qualities to become good leader (leadershipacademy.nhs.uk, 2012). I set direction of change by identifying the context for the change and examined prior the effect of following the direction so that it helps in successfully accomplish the change during its actual implementation. Moreover, I have communicated the vision for change effectively to others so that they understand the future we are to achieve for the organisation through our current services needed for better and clarified action. The NHS framework also mentions effective leadership include developing and implementing strategic plans that help in translation of achievable operation in the workplace (leadershipacademy.nhs.uk, 2012). In my workplace, I have framed and developed realistic strategies for delivering care by critically thinking about ways they are to be implemented in operation so that sustained improvement can be achieved. This indicates that I have leadership quality of developing enhanced strategy and communicating vision for change so that consistent quality services are delivered by others needed for them to show enhanced operation and productivity at work.

The Johari Window model assist in understanding the relationship with others and personal qualities (Gamayanto et al., 2019). The arena window mentions the things that are known to be present in the person both by self and others (Mathew and Sebastian, 2020). At the workplace, it is known to me and my colleagues that I have enhanced communication, decision-making, accountability, critical thinking and strategic planning skills. This is because I have always shown to be communicative in all situations, made enhanced decision in need, effectively executed my duties, implement analytical thinking for resolving complex problems and developed realistic plan to be followed at work in smoothly delivering services by me as well as others with collaboration. The other skills present in me and known to others is that I support highly structured working environment, creativity and innovation, encourage innovate idea, taking of responsibility of own work and least delegation of task. The façade window mentions the skills and qualities present in person that is known to the person but not by others (Gamayanto et al., 2019). In my workplace while acting as a natural leader, I have taken actions against unethical activities and performed risk management in all condition. However, these are not known to others as they feel I execute my duties with overconfidence without feeling there are opportunity for any risk since risk-benefit analysis and management are not executed by me in front of them.

The other thing not known to others is that I have reduced confidence in myself in supporting change since I never show my nervous side. Moreover, I do not trust my team members in making important quick decision. The blind spot in the model is mentioned as the area which is not known to self but identified and appreciated by others (Tran, 2018). In my workplace, I am mentioned by people as ability to act and encourage inspiration, act with honesty and integrity and support diversity. However, I personally do not know the reason behind the mentioned qualities been considered to be present in me as I feel doubtful of the presence of the qualities. The unknown area in the Johari window mentions the area that is yet to be discovered by the person as well as others regarding themselves (Caldwell and Anderson, 2021). In this aspect, I know that effective leadership requires optimistic attitude, better focus, stable confidence, patience and emotional intelligence. However, neither me or other peers of mine are sure or even mentioned the skills to be present in me which make me doubt regarding my efficiency of executing leadership.

Leadership Style

The understanding of the leadership style of leaders is important as it is strongly correlated with the way they lead quality of care and measures quality at work (Widyanti, 2020). I show preference to follow mixed leadership style in leading people. This is evident as in the workplace, while working in a team, I support establishment of effective communication and interaction in important long-term decision-making at work. This is to create opportunity for all the individuals to share their views and ideas in collaboratively reaching an innovative and worthy decision for essential work. However, reduced communication is supported and involved by me in necessity of quick decision making during which I took own responsible in deciding way the work is to be done and progressed. The mixed leadership style mainly includes use of positive aspects of autocratic and democratic styles of leadership by the leaders like rapid decision-making, promoting creativity, inspiring contribution and others within the team (Joshi, 2017). The expression of the skills would help in enhanced sharing of vision of work and acceptance of change as well as show value towards others which would assist in retaining talented employees to work together in delivering quality care services required in nursing care.

In the team, I was responsible in leading actions in terms of delegation, arranging and managing resources and explaining the actual presentation of information at work. In mixed leadership, leaders show ability to delegate task as well as support resource arrangement and management on their own which are task of democratic leadership (Musinguzi et al., 2018). This indicates that I prefer to follow mixed leadership style which is evident as I use both autocratic and democratic leadership skill in managing work. I also prefer dictated working methods and processes to be followed by team members based on their skills and qualities so that a structured working environment is developed. However, I feel inspired in supporting creativity and out-of-the-box thinking to be made by team members in performing their role while taking responsibility for their mistakes. It indicated that I preferred following mixed leadership style in leading the team. This is because mixed leadership style mainly includes use of positive aspects of autocratic and democratic styles of leadership by the leaders (Adha et al., 2020). For example, in this case, I support the inclusion of structured working environment which is autocratic leadership style as well as support creativity which is part of democratic leadership style. It helps to create well-directed working environment and would support innovative working ideas to be implemented for delivering quality care as a district nurse.

In autocratic leadership style, issues are raised regarding staff retention as they feel being lack of value and respect on being excluded from all decision making in work (Abdullahi et al., 2020). In contrast, the democratic leadership style creates issues of conflict within a team due to lack of well-structured work environment (Al Khajeh, 2018). However, using mixed leadership style creates the opportunity to develop structured work environment out of their autocratic nature as well as support inclusion of staffs in most decision-making process out of their democratic nature (Joshi, 2019). Since mixed leadership style helps in overcoming issues in using either of the style in nursing leadership role, thus it is preferred for current implication for leadership. However, the issues to be faced by preferring to follow mixed leadership style is that it creates lack of supervision for the employees to make them feel supported in developing in practice. Moreover, the style raises issue of time management and leading actions under pressure top the increased complexity in performing and implementing the style (Rao and Zaidi, 2020).

Impact on future in District Nurse Practice

According to my leadership analysis based on NHS Leadership Framework, the impact of demonstrating personal qualities of integrity, continued personal development and self -awareness would impact me in becoming a leader who values and improve personal strength and abilities to deliver high quality of care. The supportive working nature with other in the current condition would impact me in future leader in District Nurse Practice to promote multi-disciplinary team working and networking that delivers enhanced person-centred care and improved services to patients. In the present analysis, it is identified that I have enhanced communication ability. It would impact me in future to settle conflicts and support enhanced interaction of vision during change to nursing staffs so that they understand the reason of making the change which would facilitate easy improvement in district nursing practice during changing situation.

The enhanced analytical thinking ability would also impact me in future to overcome critical situation in District Nursing Practice (DNP). This is because analytical thinking helps in developing best strategic plan for accomplishing any complex task as it assists in viewing the reason of the problem as well as assist in identifying the risk and benefit related with the actions to be performed for the task (Puccio et al., 2020). The successful action in supporting planning and management of resources, people and task would help me as leader of DNP to create enhanced resource availability, motivated workers and accountability of workers for positive service outcome. This is because planning and managing people, resources and task is one of the key aspects required for successful delivery of services (Thusini and Mingay, 2019). Further, my enhanced ability to set direction at work, supporting creativity and innovation, taking of responsibility, implementing honesty and integrity would help me in future as a leader for DNP to develop diverse and high-quality workforce who work ethically in structured way to deliver enhanced care services to patients.

Critical Analysis of own Leadership

In the workplace, while working in different groups, I identified that I was executing the action to determine my leadership qualities when in each of the teams I was asked to analyse and set the final decision for executing any work. This is because I realised that it is only requirement of a developing leader to make appropriate decisions in team work to provide their potential of critical and strategic thinking in leading others. Moreover, I realised of following identification of leadership skills while working in different groups when I was asked to take responsibility in providing my work to improve existing services with holistic participation from other team members. I also identified I was determining my leadership qualities in group when reflection regarding self-worth of managing services and working with others are asked to be analysed.

The work went well in determining my leadership qualities in the aspect that it helped me understanding the strength and weakness of leadership skills I have to be a leader. However, the thing which did not went well in the work is that I failed to identify if few of the essential skills such as optimism, focus, confidence and others I have as a leader to perform effective leadership. Moreover, way to overcome the weakness in leadership identified were also not clear from the work. The impact of working in different groups to identify leadership qualities is that it helped me to determine my level of ability and availability of skills to become a leader. It also helped me in interpreting the nature of behaviour I poses to show as a leader to my subordinates in future. Moreover, the working in different groups impacted me to determine the existing skills I have for my preferred mixed leadership style to be followed as a leader.

SMART Action Plan

The analysis of the personal leadership ability led me to determine that few of the aspects to be improved for become better leader in future which are confidence, acceptance of effective feedback and ability to train or mentor people. A SMART Action Plan is developed for the identified skills of leadership that are to be worked on for improvement.

Action 1: To improve confidence skills as a leader

Action 2: To enhance acceptance of feedback for personal qualities as leader

Action 3: To improve ability in training and mentoring people while acting as leader

Conclusion

The above discussion informs that through NHS Leadership Framework, it is identified that I have enhanced self-awareness of personal skills, management ability, collaborative work tendency, vision creation and communication, strategic thinking and others. The Johari Window model informed that I as a leader have enhanced communication, decision-making, accountability, critical thinking and other skills. However, I show poor confidence, acceptance of feedback and other skills. For this purpose, the SMART Action Plan is to be followed to improve the skills. The current identification of leadership qualities has helped me understand the aspects to be improved and my current level efficiency of leading people in future in District Nurse practice.

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