Plan to address my weaknesses and develop the skills needed for success
By utilizing what I have learned from the theories and articles presented within the chapters of my book. The following provides an overview of the actions I will take to develop into a great leader.
Developing my Weaknesses into Strengths:
Emotional Intelligence
Truly understanding the composition of your organizations culture is essential in attempting to further develop and improve it. To become an industry driver of healthcare change, I will need an incredibly strong team and network to support my initiatives. Many times, when effectiveness needs to be increased, I will not be able to derive the ideas and answers needed by myself. Employing the appreciative inquiry perspective as defined in this article, I will be able to draw upon the competencies of my network and team to develop those ideas. One of my largest challenges will be to minimize the factor within human relations where the shortcuts learned and shared within a team and not shared with leadership. By utilizing my friendly and dependable skills, I hope to maintain a very open communication channel where team members feel comfortable coming to me with suggestions, ideas, and processes that they have found useful, and that could be transferred to other subsections of the organization.
Providing Support and Stimulation
Relating Maslow's hierarchy of needs to motivating employees can be tough, but if we look at it level by level, employers can provide the resources and support needed for an employee to reach the self-actualization level. The first two levels, physiological and safety can be address by providing a competitive wage and benefits package. Transitioning through the next few levels becomes a bit more difficult. In order to achieve the needs of loving and belonging, organizational leaders need to cultivate a culture of acceptance, openness and support. Although not able to provide the sexual intimacy factor, employers with cooperative and engaged cultures can easily provide a feeling of belonging among employees. As I have been known to have a notable ability to naturally bring people together and achieve mutual goals, I can play to my strengths when developing my organizational culture. The next step, esteem, can be supported by employers by providing recognition and praise to address the "lower" version. To fulfill the "higher" version, an organization can provide the training and resources needed to gain skill mastery and competence. Not only does this involve technical training, but mentoring can provide an additional factor to an employees esteem. As one of the skills needed to achieve my goals, continuing to improving my mentoring ability will provide colleagues with the esteem needed to progress to the highest tier of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
In the right environment, with the right support and stimulation, individuals become most satisfied with their work when they are able to have a sense of achievement and are recognized for that achievement. As an aspiring future leader, I plan on implementing a personal policy which was utilized at the very first organization I worked for utilized, an personal Thank You/Appreciation note per month program. By writing personalized thank you notes, you provide employees with an ensured confidence that their leadership is aware of their achievements and appreciates their efforts.
Patience
As I feel that I am currently in an unformal mentoring program as a mentee, I believe that the benefits from mentoring are second to none. By being able to absorb the vast amount of information provided by years of experience from my mentor. Having only two and a half years of professional experience and the same amount of time being mentored, seems to have exponential side effects as I now have the responsibility and accountability of a senior level analyst with three times the job experience would. As this study suggests, once I have established myself in my profession and organization the likelihood of becoming a mentor myself is about 75%. Yet, as one of my the skills I feel need to achieve my aspirations is mentoring, I believe that I am much more likely to do so, even to the point that I would like to implement a formal mentoring program within my future organizations. Similar to the work I have already done with our college interns, I hope to provide the direction and guidance needed for my mentee's career success. By creating these programs, I will be able to further develop my patience with others knowing that I may sacrifice some effectiveness by educating.
Communication
Further developing the knowledge and skills needed to successfully manage change, by maximizing the influence intrinsically motivated employees, minimizing second-order change, and developing a high-level of transformational communication I can be confident that the changes I will lead will met reduced resistance. Although much easier said than done, one of my major weaknesses that I need to improve upon is ensuring open communication as I have a tendency to make assumption that those around me have been enlighten at the same level as I. By taking a step back and describing the change's vision, opportunities, and challenges, those who are "On-board" with the change can provide the support needed to increase the effectiveness of the change initiative.
Developing the Skills Needed to Succeed as a Healthcare Leader:
Healthcare Industry Knowledge
The highest tier in the motivational hierarchy is intrinsic motivation. By focusing my efforts to meet the three key factors of intrinsic motivation, developing a team of highly motivated colleagues can be achieved. To do so, gaining a deep knowledge of each operational and strategic sector will provide me with the ability communicate task importance, develop colleagues skills, and generate genuine enthusiasm.
As a Supply Chain professional in healthcare, the article "Ethics and Economics in Healthcare" had a strong personal touch as I much more often than not, find myself focusing on cost reduction initiatives rather than improvements to patient care. In a recent experience, the Director of Patient Satisfaction proposed the implementation of a new product which would reduce the number of hospital acquired pressure ulcers. This new product was more expensive when compared to the product which we currently utilized, but due to a reduction in ulcers was expected, the initiative moved forward. After six months post implementation, we have seen nearly 50% reduction in hospital acquired pressure ulcers and only a 5% increase in related expenses due to the new product; making this initiative extremely successful. In order to achieve my goals, one of the key skills I need to succeed is clinical connectivity, by consistently keeping in mind that organizational changes should maintain or improve patient quality, I believe my efforts will be well accepted and effective.
Clinical Connectivity
Even though the study showed that a healthcare organizations culture may not be directly related to patient satisfaction or controllable expenses, it is strongly related to employee and physician satisfaction. By having high employee satisfaction, an organization can reduce employee turnover, which tends to be extremely costly, especially in knowledge worker roles where it can take months for employees to get up-to-speed. In addition I have also seen how employee satisfaction can directly relate to the effectiveness of teams by promoting open communication and increasing motivation. One of the major flaws that i observed with this study is that it mainly focused on C-Suite and department leaders who have a macro view of the organization, but often are disconnected with the thoughts and feelings of those actually providing services to the customers.
As developing a highly preforming organizational culture depends upon a leaders ability to listen and apply changes that apply to one of CVF's domains; I feel that by working to improve my emotional intelligence will help me appropriately react to situations where the culture I have worked to develop is in jeopardy.
Physician Engagement
By continuing to develop my knowledge of the healthcare industry, , I believe that the potential to employ the patient-centered decision model may become useful in some circumstances. Yet, within the organization that I currently work for, managed care is by far the most prevalent determinate to the way we approach patient care. As many of our patients are on Medicare or Medicaid, a fixed amount of reimbursement is determined by the clinical assessment of each patient. Whether or not the patient want's more or less treatment, our reimbursement remains the same. Furthermore, penalties are assessed to our hospitals if patients are readmitted to our hospital with similar ailments as to those they were previously discharge because of. With the introduction of the affordable care act, even more individuals will now fall under the same reimbursement guidelines. If healthcare providers are continually pushed away from fee-for-service and more towards managed care, i feel that the likelihood of implementing the patient-centered decision model becomes more and more of a distant dream. Nonetheless, addressing this issue will become one of my main career goals; but before I even begin to offer suggestions, I need to gain much more knowledge and insight into the industry.
Vision
In order to meet my goals of becoming a future leader and impact player, developing a highly motivated and supportive team will be essential. By implementing the primary lever as identified in HBR's Employee Motivation article, I can master the ability to address the four drives of employee emotion and motivation. Depending on the organization, this may be easier said than done, but by trying to make the best of each situation and providing transparent communications, I plan on becoming a highly rated leader in whichever organization I take part in.
By facilitating an organizational culture that caters to knowledge workers by keeping them engaged, intrigued, and full of pride will greatly enhance the effectiveness of the departments I am a part of and lead. Fostering an organizational culture which motivates, inspires, and retains both knowledge and traditional workers is a challenge that many leaders face in today's large corporations. With a huge variety of employees completing many different tasks, implementing various incentive and recognition systems can help foster a highly motivated culture. As this addresses just one aspect of an organizations culture, there are many other facets that need to be addressed. My future aspirations and goals can be realized by creating an open and environment in which employees feel that their actions and not politics will drive the recommendations and monetary rewards received.
Mentoring
I believe that mentoring is a very important part of any potential future leader in today's society. While one's education and experience can provide a great amount of knowledge needed to become a great leader; creating a relationship with someone whom has already gone through the trials and tribulations of being in a leadership position. As I am currently involved in an informal mentoring program, I have had the opportunity to learn how to utilize a variety of strategic tactics to influence others to produce the results desired. Without being a part of this informal mentoring program, I feel that I would not have the ability to have near as much of an impact to my organization as I do today. Thus moving forward in my career, I have a strong desire to continue being informally mentored and even more importantly, provide the same opportunities to others by becoming a mentor myself.
Influencing
Relating more to my goals of becoming an extensive knowledge resource and utilizing my influential personality, I feel that learning to adapt my style and approach to the many different situations I will come across in my career is vital. By continuing to develop my understanding of the healthcare industry, my trait theory abilities will continue to improve. Simultaneously, by carefully analyzing and becoming reflective of my behaviors, I intend on learning to the appropriate interpersonal approach to each situation.
In order to achieve my long-term goal of becoming an industry driver of healthcare change, I feel that becoming a charismatic/transformational leader is vital. Based on the results in this article, the most important factors are demonstrating supportiveness and assuredness, while avoiding verbal aggressiveness. It is my perception that avoiding verbal aggressiveness should be easy to accomplish, my focus will enhancing my supportiveness and assuredness communication styles.
Innovative Thinking
Employing teams and "Families", the theory of close knit teams we discussed in class, on the various projects I will be involved in, lead, and direct will need to become second nature as the they continue to prove their value by increasing communication, efficiency, and effectiveness. The struggle will be to know what type of team to employ dependent on each task that is suitable for employee collaboration. Whether a group, team, or family is more applicable will depend on the amount of inter-connectivity, collaboration, and communication needed.
Trustworthiness
Further developing the knowledge and skills needed to successfully manage change, by maximizing the influence intrinsically motivated employees, minimizing second-order change, and developing a high-level of transformational communication I can be confident that the changes I will lead will met reduced resistance. Although much easier said than done, one of my major weaknesses that I need to improve upon is ensuring open communication as I have a tendency to make assumption that those around me have been enlighten at the same level as I. By taking a step back and describing the change's vision, opportunities, and challenges, those who are "On-board" with the change can provide the support needed to increase the effectiveness of the change initiative.
Change is important to every organization, but realizing and coping with resistances to change by effectively communicating the changes vision and goals is essential to long-term success. As one of my initial medium-term goals is to move into a leadership position within an organization open and willing to change, I feel that I may need to redesign the statement to something more along the lines of, move into a leadership position where I am able to create a culture of openness to change through the use of effective change techniques. I say this because as I have read, understood and reflected upon change theories, I now realize that although an organization may seem open to change, it is the individuals that are within the organization that determine if a change is successful or not. And almost no matter what, there will be some resistance to change as we are all human beings who get comfortable with the repetition and structure of our current environment. By understanding the fundamentals of designing, implementing and tracking change, I will be able to effectively utilize Kotter's eight step change management model to benefit any organization I am a part of.
Developing my Weaknesses into Strengths:
Emotional Intelligence
Truly understanding the composition of your organizations culture is essential in attempting to further develop and improve it. To become an industry driver of healthcare change, I will need an incredibly strong team and network to support my initiatives. Many times, when effectiveness needs to be increased, I will not be able to derive the ideas and answers needed by myself. Employing the appreciative inquiry perspective as defined in this article, I will be able to draw upon the competencies of my network and team to develop those ideas. One of my largest challenges will be to minimize the factor within human relations where the shortcuts learned and shared within a team and not shared with leadership. By utilizing my friendly and dependable skills, I hope to maintain a very open communication channel where team members feel comfortable coming to me with suggestions, ideas, and processes that they have found useful, and that could be transferred to other subsections of the organization.
Providing Support and Stimulation
Relating Maslow's hierarchy of needs to motivating employees can be tough, but if we look at it level by level, employers can provide the resources and support needed for an employee to reach the self-actualization level. The first two levels, physiological and safety can be address by providing a competitive wage and benefits package. Transitioning through the next few levels becomes a bit more difficult. In order to achieve the needs of loving and belonging, organizational leaders need to cultivate a culture of acceptance, openness and support. Although not able to provide the sexual intimacy factor, employers with cooperative and engaged cultures can easily provide a feeling of belonging among employees. As I have been known to have a notable ability to naturally bring people together and achieve mutual goals, I can play to my strengths when developing my organizational culture. The next step, esteem, can be supported by employers by providing recognition and praise to address the "lower" version. To fulfill the "higher" version, an organization can provide the training and resources needed to gain skill mastery and competence. Not only does this involve technical training, but mentoring can provide an additional factor to an employees esteem. As one of the skills needed to achieve my goals, continuing to improving my mentoring ability will provide colleagues with the esteem needed to progress to the highest tier of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
In the right environment, with the right support and stimulation, individuals become most satisfied with their work when they are able to have a sense of achievement and are recognized for that achievement. As an aspiring future leader, I plan on implementing a personal policy which was utilized at the very first organization I worked for utilized, an personal Thank You/Appreciation note per month program. By writing personalized thank you notes, you provide employees with an ensured confidence that their leadership is aware of their achievements and appreciates their efforts.
Patience
As I feel that I am currently in an unformal mentoring program as a mentee, I believe that the benefits from mentoring are second to none. By being able to absorb the vast amount of information provided by years of experience from my mentor. Having only two and a half years of professional experience and the same amount of time being mentored, seems to have exponential side effects as I now have the responsibility and accountability of a senior level analyst with three times the job experience would. As this study suggests, once I have established myself in my profession and organization the likelihood of becoming a mentor myself is about 75%. Yet, as one of my the skills I feel need to achieve my aspirations is mentoring, I believe that I am much more likely to do so, even to the point that I would like to implement a formal mentoring program within my future organizations. Similar to the work I have already done with our college interns, I hope to provide the direction and guidance needed for my mentee's career success. By creating these programs, I will be able to further develop my patience with others knowing that I may sacrifice some effectiveness by educating.
Communication
Further developing the knowledge and skills needed to successfully manage change, by maximizing the influence intrinsically motivated employees, minimizing second-order change, and developing a high-level of transformational communication I can be confident that the changes I will lead will met reduced resistance. Although much easier said than done, one of my major weaknesses that I need to improve upon is ensuring open communication as I have a tendency to make assumption that those around me have been enlighten at the same level as I. By taking a step back and describing the change's vision, opportunities, and challenges, those who are "On-board" with the change can provide the support needed to increase the effectiveness of the change initiative.
Developing the Skills Needed to Succeed as a Healthcare Leader:
Healthcare Industry Knowledge
The highest tier in the motivational hierarchy is intrinsic motivation. By focusing my efforts to meet the three key factors of intrinsic motivation, developing a team of highly motivated colleagues can be achieved. To do so, gaining a deep knowledge of each operational and strategic sector will provide me with the ability communicate task importance, develop colleagues skills, and generate genuine enthusiasm.
As a Supply Chain professional in healthcare, the article "Ethics and Economics in Healthcare" had a strong personal touch as I much more often than not, find myself focusing on cost reduction initiatives rather than improvements to patient care. In a recent experience, the Director of Patient Satisfaction proposed the implementation of a new product which would reduce the number of hospital acquired pressure ulcers. This new product was more expensive when compared to the product which we currently utilized, but due to a reduction in ulcers was expected, the initiative moved forward. After six months post implementation, we have seen nearly 50% reduction in hospital acquired pressure ulcers and only a 5% increase in related expenses due to the new product; making this initiative extremely successful. In order to achieve my goals, one of the key skills I need to succeed is clinical connectivity, by consistently keeping in mind that organizational changes should maintain or improve patient quality, I believe my efforts will be well accepted and effective.
Clinical Connectivity
Even though the study showed that a healthcare organizations culture may not be directly related to patient satisfaction or controllable expenses, it is strongly related to employee and physician satisfaction. By having high employee satisfaction, an organization can reduce employee turnover, which tends to be extremely costly, especially in knowledge worker roles where it can take months for employees to get up-to-speed. In addition I have also seen how employee satisfaction can directly relate to the effectiveness of teams by promoting open communication and increasing motivation. One of the major flaws that i observed with this study is that it mainly focused on C-Suite and department leaders who have a macro view of the organization, but often are disconnected with the thoughts and feelings of those actually providing services to the customers.
As developing a highly preforming organizational culture depends upon a leaders ability to listen and apply changes that apply to one of CVF's domains; I feel that by working to improve my emotional intelligence will help me appropriately react to situations where the culture I have worked to develop is in jeopardy.
Physician Engagement
By continuing to develop my knowledge of the healthcare industry, , I believe that the potential to employ the patient-centered decision model may become useful in some circumstances. Yet, within the organization that I currently work for, managed care is by far the most prevalent determinate to the way we approach patient care. As many of our patients are on Medicare or Medicaid, a fixed amount of reimbursement is determined by the clinical assessment of each patient. Whether or not the patient want's more or less treatment, our reimbursement remains the same. Furthermore, penalties are assessed to our hospitals if patients are readmitted to our hospital with similar ailments as to those they were previously discharge because of. With the introduction of the affordable care act, even more individuals will now fall under the same reimbursement guidelines. If healthcare providers are continually pushed away from fee-for-service and more towards managed care, i feel that the likelihood of implementing the patient-centered decision model becomes more and more of a distant dream. Nonetheless, addressing this issue will become one of my main career goals; but before I even begin to offer suggestions, I need to gain much more knowledge and insight into the industry.
Vision
In order to meet my goals of becoming a future leader and impact player, developing a highly motivated and supportive team will be essential. By implementing the primary lever as identified in HBR's Employee Motivation article, I can master the ability to address the four drives of employee emotion and motivation. Depending on the organization, this may be easier said than done, but by trying to make the best of each situation and providing transparent communications, I plan on becoming a highly rated leader in whichever organization I take part in.
By facilitating an organizational culture that caters to knowledge workers by keeping them engaged, intrigued, and full of pride will greatly enhance the effectiveness of the departments I am a part of and lead. Fostering an organizational culture which motivates, inspires, and retains both knowledge and traditional workers is a challenge that many leaders face in today's large corporations. With a huge variety of employees completing many different tasks, implementing various incentive and recognition systems can help foster a highly motivated culture. As this addresses just one aspect of an organizations culture, there are many other facets that need to be addressed. My future aspirations and goals can be realized by creating an open and environment in which employees feel that their actions and not politics will drive the recommendations and monetary rewards received.
Mentoring
I believe that mentoring is a very important part of any potential future leader in today's society. While one's education and experience can provide a great amount of knowledge needed to become a great leader; creating a relationship with someone whom has already gone through the trials and tribulations of being in a leadership position. As I am currently involved in an informal mentoring program, I have had the opportunity to learn how to utilize a variety of strategic tactics to influence others to produce the results desired. Without being a part of this informal mentoring program, I feel that I would not have the ability to have near as much of an impact to my organization as I do today. Thus moving forward in my career, I have a strong desire to continue being informally mentored and even more importantly, provide the same opportunities to others by becoming a mentor myself.
Influencing
Relating more to my goals of becoming an extensive knowledge resource and utilizing my influential personality, I feel that learning to adapt my style and approach to the many different situations I will come across in my career is vital. By continuing to develop my understanding of the healthcare industry, my trait theory abilities will continue to improve. Simultaneously, by carefully analyzing and becoming reflective of my behaviors, I intend on learning to the appropriate interpersonal approach to each situation.
In order to achieve my long-term goal of becoming an industry driver of healthcare change, I feel that becoming a charismatic/transformational leader is vital. Based on the results in this article, the most important factors are demonstrating supportiveness and assuredness, while avoiding verbal aggressiveness. It is my perception that avoiding verbal aggressiveness should be easy to accomplish, my focus will enhancing my supportiveness and assuredness communication styles.
Innovative Thinking
Employing teams and "Families", the theory of close knit teams we discussed in class, on the various projects I will be involved in, lead, and direct will need to become second nature as the they continue to prove their value by increasing communication, efficiency, and effectiveness. The struggle will be to know what type of team to employ dependent on each task that is suitable for employee collaboration. Whether a group, team, or family is more applicable will depend on the amount of inter-connectivity, collaboration, and communication needed.
Trustworthiness
Further developing the knowledge and skills needed to successfully manage change, by maximizing the influence intrinsically motivated employees, minimizing second-order change, and developing a high-level of transformational communication I can be confident that the changes I will lead will met reduced resistance. Although much easier said than done, one of my major weaknesses that I need to improve upon is ensuring open communication as I have a tendency to make assumption that those around me have been enlighten at the same level as I. By taking a step back and describing the change's vision, opportunities, and challenges, those who are "On-board" with the change can provide the support needed to increase the effectiveness of the change initiative.
Change is important to every organization, but realizing and coping with resistances to change by effectively communicating the changes vision and goals is essential to long-term success. As one of my initial medium-term goals is to move into a leadership position within an organization open and willing to change, I feel that I may need to redesign the statement to something more along the lines of, move into a leadership position where I am able to create a culture of openness to change through the use of effective change techniques. I say this because as I have read, understood and reflected upon change theories, I now realize that although an organization may seem open to change, it is the individuals that are within the organization that determine if a change is successful or not. And almost no matter what, there will be some resistance to change as we are all human beings who get comfortable with the repetition and structure of our current environment. By understanding the fundamentals of designing, implementing and tracking change, I will be able to effectively utilize Kotter's eight step change management model to benefit any organization I am a part of.