Leadership, an art involve motivating individuals towards accomplishing a specific goal, is fundamental for the enhancement and development of the nursing practice (Marquis & Huston, 2012). Leadership involves display of exemplary qualities and characters that are congruent to the core values of a given discipline; in this case the core values of nursing. In addition, leadership entails moral obligation hence the ethics of leadership within the nursing fraternity (Northouse, 2011). An ethical leader is one who ensures that the subjects apply right actions in the right way for the right reasons. The following discussion entails a personal review of the ethical leadership, which includes core values, characters, and general understanding of the personal leadership qualities.
Core Values
The Core Values Questionnaire provided specific questions enabling an individual to identify specific core values in relation to a given discipline. While using the Core Value Questinnaire, I identified specific core values that I believe are relevant within the nursing fraternity. From the Questionnaire my core values include peace, wealth, happiness, success, and friendship on the one hand and power, influence, justice, integrity, and joy on the other hand. Other core values that I identified from the Questionnaire include love, recognition, family, truth, and wisdom. However, narrowing down all the identified core values, I identified happiness, success, honesty, loyalty, fairness, love, family, and adaptability as the eight most important core values within the nursing fraternity.
I am comfortable talking about these values with others. Families are basic units of societies. Family is a fundamental unit from where an individual is raised and taught the values of life. A good family will definitely teach and inculcate in an individual the good values whereas an irresponsible family will only make an individual to be irresponsible. In addition, a family full of love makes a person to be loving and caring. Therefore, a person learns a lot of the family. The aspects learned from the family can easily be applied within the community or society. It is in this respect that I find family and love the top most important core values. Nevertheless, the other core values are equally important and I feel so comfortable in discussing them with my peers. I believe that as a nurse, there is need to be loving and have specific core values that will enhance the provision of efficient and effective healthcare to different patients without any discrimination.
I have no doubt that five years from now my core values will influence my actions to a great extent. The values of happiness and honesty will definitely make me be a person who does not only want to achieve set goals but also to make other people happy through my actions. Since the nursing fraternity deals with people that are unhappy due to the pain that they experience, I will be able to make them happy through my actions. In addition, I will perform my actions with utmost integrity. Honesty is an important value especially with respect to the requirements of the nursing fraternity. Success and loyalty are values that influence positive actions on me. I will be able to work with the required loyalty as a focus on being successful within the nursing fraternity. In the next five years, the fairness and adaptability values will enable me to treat every patient equally without any form of discrimination whilst being a flexible leader who can perform any duty that is assigned to me within the fraternity. Lastly, the family and love values will definitely help me in future to treat my colleagues and patients with a lot of love and respect. Indeed, in future the identified core values will be very important to me especially within the nursing fraternity.
Character
A person’s character involves the disposition and core values. Character is a fundamental aspect in relation to ethical leadership. As a person, I possess specific dispositions and core values that make me a good leader. Examples of my dispositions and core values that make me a good leader include the character of responsibility, respect, caring, fairness, and citizenship. My character strengths critical thinking, creative problem solving, and mentoring, which falls under my character of being responsible. With respect to being respectful, caring, and fair, my character strengths include the ability to conduct a fair decision making process that respect opinions of all the involved stakeholders and the fact that I am a positive role model to my peers. The citizenship character is seen in my motivational skills and being ready to accept the challenges in my nursing profession. In addition, I strive to promote cohesiveness amongst the staff members in a bid to enhancing the idea of team building.
Nonetheless, despite the various strengths within my characters, I also possess and accept my weaknesses as a person. Amongst the character weaknesses that I exhibit include poor communication and ineffective listening. I am an impatient person and this makes it difficult for me to effectively listen to various situations. What’s more, I am not a good communicator especially in the presence of a magnitude. Other weaknesses within my character include the fact that I do not have the patience to carry out an effective evaluation of a situation. In most cases, this weakness usually leads to poor decisions. Lastly, I always use the constructive criticism on my team members. Despite the fact that it is a good thing to criticize a person, the approach matters a lot. These are indeed my character weaknesses that may not make me the best leader within the nursing fraternity as it is expected.
In order to enhance my character weaknesses to make them into strengths, there are specific actions that I need to perform. These actions include:
- I will have to develop patience especially in listening to my team members
- I will have to change the way I criticize my team members
- I will undergo an extensive training to acquire both communication and evaluation skills
Overall Reflection
Whilst reflecting more holistically on my leadership, I am a good leader with few weaknesses. I can also say that I am not only a moral but also an ethical leader. I believe that I have the desired characters and qualities that can make a good leader. Despite the weaknesses, I believe that my qualities, core values, and dispositions provide me with the opportunity to effectively, efficiently, and adequately lead my team members. As an ethical leader I pay close attention to my team members besides paying attention to my core values and disposition. In addition, I pay close attention to my action and goals that need to be accomplished. I have been able to influence my team members to always use the right action right in order to achieve the right objective or goal. Being an honest person with specific values, I always use my power to uplift and guide my team members in the right direction.
Moreover, the use of morally accepted actions to achieve my goals as well as influence my team members in doing the same describe me as an ethical leader. Indeed, I strongly believe that I am a good leader who is also a role model to the team members. Ethical leadership is all about doing the right thing and the right time in the right manner to achieve the right goals. This is what defines my leadership qualities, dispositions, and core values.
References
Marquis, B. L., & Huston, C. J. (2012). Leadership roles and management functions in nursing: Theory and application. (7th ed., pp. 31-32). Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins | Wolters Kluwer.
Northouse, P. G. (2011). Introduction to leadership: Concepts and practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Incorporated.
