Analysis of Authentic Leadership - Literature review Example

?Authentic Leadership Leadership is one of the essentials in a work place no matter the kind of work one would consider. It is through leadership that most of the objectives, direction, and decision are made, it is therefore important that the kind of leadership that is being instituted be the best in realizing and achieving goals as well as being a role model to the work team. Organization’s performance is determined and composed of the association that is exhibited between the workers and the management. Authentic leadership is one such that will ensure that the people are the above-mentioned achievement. According to Bill George, authentic leadership will be self-driven in serving others using their leadership as the conduit. This kind of leadership is also focused in empowering others so that they can also be in a position of making difference, in this regard, it is proper to construe that they are not megalomaniacs and kleptomaniacs who have legendry interest in power, prestige, and money. Authentic leadership also draws their guidance from the mind and the heart- it practices guidance that is heart-based and at the same time hinged on compassion and passion (Hames 2007, p.88). Authentic leadership is also thoughtful and demonstrates qualities of the mind and lead with purpose, meaning, and values. Their relationship is strong and genuine and this attracts people to them because they demonstrate consistency, reliability, and strength. Authentic leadership does not compromise on the values that they believe in even in the most difficult situation that they are pushed to the walls; instead, they are dedicated to learning and personal growth owing to the subscription in this kind of leadership that it takes a lifetime to be a leader. Authentic leadership will demonstrate the following qualities truth, lead from the heart, show rich moral fiber, courageous, create teams and communities, they deepen themselves, dream, care for others, committed to excellence rather than perfection, and leaves legacy (Hames 2007, p.93). Emotional Intelligence The ability to make rational assessment, observation, and management of emotions is what is referred to as emotional intelligence. The knowledge of emotional intelligence plays an integral role in understanding how to deal with people. To have emotional intelligence can be looked into four cardinal perspectives; perceiving emotions, understanding emotions, reasoning with emotions and managing emotions. In the perception of the emotion, one should be in a position of making deduction on one’s emotion just by observing the body language and the facial expression (Bradberry 2009, p.54). In this regard, you will be able to know people’s feeling without saying a word to them. Identification of the emotion plays a significant role in emotional intelligence and in this reference, one need to be equipped with the ability. Reasoning with emotion on the other hand means making a choice whether it is prudent to engage to the person’s emotions or not. In addition to this, one also needs to understand emotions, and it involves conceiving the emotions manifested by people and interpreting them correctly to know what they mean. Lastly, management of the emotions involves taking control of your own emotions so that you can be at non-polarized state when making response to others (Zeidner, Gerald, and Roberts 2009, p.81). This is the most important factor in emotional intelligence because otherwise you will not be giving appropriate response to the situation. Those with emotional intelligence will demonstrate sobriety even in an intense situation would not be under control for those without the knowledge of emotional intelligence. Healthy Work Environment Authentic leadership coupled with emotional intelligence is necessary precursor in the development of a healthy Work environment. Whether the work environment is healthy or not is directly related to the management of the work place either at the overall management, departmental or at the unit level. A health work environment involve quite a lot of issues that revolves around provision of all the required material for efficient work to be done, encouragement and empowerment of the employees to achieve the objectives through authentic leadership. Involvement of the workers in decision making regarding issues that affects them enables them to make useful contribution that if taken into account, will make it possible to enhance how healthy a work environment is managed. In this doing, they will have a feeling of a sense of belonging as a family in the work place and this is a footing for morale setting. Emotional intelligence is also an important tool in dealing the employees in furthering a healthy working environment. In a work place, it is normal that we deal with people from diverse background that also happen to be facing several challenges daily in their lives, it is important to appreciate this an one who has gained knowledge of emotional intelligence and can understand the emotional requirement of the different employees. Employees work all day and every day during peak period and non-peak period, they are faced with stress throughout and at the same time, they have to work, and report every day, the dynamics of life in this case can present emotional torture that can only be contained through effective therapy by those with the knowledge of emotional intelligence. Authentic leadership in combination with the emotional intelligence provides a perfect opportunity for the development of a healthy work environment given that the two provide a wider scope of understanding that just leadership for results. While the authentic leadership will be serving the people from the heart driven with purpose meaning and values, it will win the employees beliefs given the demonstrated traits (Zuckerman 2005, p.74). Authentic leaders with encourage diversity, growth, and take initiatives on any issue that is raised by the workers. This interprets than at no point will the grievances of the employees be left unattended to under the leadership of authentic leaders. They will also practice high integrity, trustworthiness, and show wisdom in every step they make with the employees, on the other hand, emotional intelligence will resolve any of the dissatisfaction that may be expressed by the workers and remains genuine. The two factors are the leading essentials in coming up with a healthy work environment that is mindful of every entity. Change Management One of the most inevitable happenings in a business is change, regardless of the size, age and thee industry a business is in, it is bound to have some change so that it can continue providing its services in the most appropriate way. The business environment remains dynamic and businesses must embrace change in one way or the other about how they go about their businesses so that they can thrive, otherwise those businesses that do not want to embrace change will face challenges in surviving. The change concept is a cliche to most of the businesses today and the only difference is how they consider and manage change to successfully realize their aim of bringing about change depending on the nature of the business, the change process, and the individuals involved in the change process. Bringing about change in a business therefore is an important aspect as it promotes efficiency in the business and ensures that accountability, work environment, and standards are met. It aims at improving any status identified as not enabling the business advance in the direction of prosperity. The leadership of a business at the managerial position are suppose to identify these requirement at the most opportune time so that businesses can be in a position of making correction early enough to avoid prolonged period of engaging in a system that is unproductive. Lewin’s Proposed Change Model Kurt Lewin in 1940s proposed a three-staged system of bringing about change in a business and the proposed system is still used to date amongst the businesses in bringing change in their businesses. He also warned that change should be motivated by a justified reason and must not be done for the purposes of bringing change alone-it may bring unnecessary chaos and turmoil in the business. Before change is introduced into the business, one needs to carefully comprehend the necessity of change in the business. In this regard, the motivation for change must precede change before it can be introduced. The three stages of bringing change as proposed by Lewin have three stages; unfreeze, change, and refreeze (Zuckerman 2005, p.84). Unfreeze Stage It is important that before change is introduced in a business, the business be prepared of it and to accept that change is needed; this is done by breaking the status quo before coming up with the new structure that will replace the old system. In doing this, one has to clearly give a background message that is compelling and by which others will have to see the sense of change. The message can be on declining sales, dwindling financial reports as shown by the books of account, and issues to do with the dissatisfaction of customers as revealed by the survey. The other thing ofvery important significance here is also successfully challenging the core beliefs in which the business operates, this involves issues to do with values, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors (Zuckerman 2005, p.86). These initial stages always face resistance by those who do not want change as it will disturb their comfort but it is necessary for the business to survive. Change Stage It is normal that the unfreeze state of change will come with certain uncertainties that is not understood by the many people, at the change stage, they will acclimatize with the requirements of the change process and start embracing the new ideas by actions and beliefs. It should be noted that the transition from unfreeze to change is not an overnight event and time is of essence so that people can understand the change process so that they can contribute making the change successful (Zuckerman 2005, p.96). How change will benefit the people must also be clearly stated to ensure that they will appreciate and support the change, it is not always uncommon to find people resisting change in a dormant way because they do not understand it benefits to them. Refreeze Stage When the proposed change in the business is taking shape and that the employees are embracing the proposed system of doing things, the organization can be said to be ripe for refreeze. This stage is essential for the business to institutionalize and internalize the new changes by ensuring that they are practiced at all the times in the business. The employees will have the feeling of confidence and feel comfortable with the changes if they bring about certain levels of stability in the organization. It is important to celebrate with employees successes brought about by the change process, as this is necessary for closure and thanking everybody for enduring the difficult times for the sake of change (Zuckerman 2005, p.101). They should also be assured that future changes would be successful. Case-Study-Nursing An organization that deals with the provision of health care may want to bring changes that mostly affects nurses and they are expected to appreciate the change and embrace it for the purpose of efficiency in business. It has been realized that in most of the times, nurses are not autonomous and are not involved in any decision making process, this has been identified to be one of the challenges facing the organization in terms of achieving efficiency and objective. Nurses are therefore supposed to achieve some degree of autonomy by engaging them in decision-making. In this regard, the business have failed to know for the purpose of management, the quality of health care since they are not only not consistently measured but also not reported, understood or used in the decision making for the business to achieve high standards of service provision to the esteem customers. Following the need to assess and know the quality of healthcare provided by the organization, the management team would have to involve nurses in making decisions so that precise data can be received for sound action to be taken. In realizing this, there will be scheduled meetings between the management and the nurses so that fundamental issues on quality of healthcare can be discussed regularly and be updated to others via the channel of communication. It is therefore salient that regular meetings and co-operation between the management and the nurses must be inculcated if valid information about quality health care is a concern for the organization in informing their choices. The impact of the change will be evaluated by monitoring the number of patient the health care will be receiving periodically and asking the patient to rate the quality of services they received and if they were satisfied. The feedback information will tell whether the change process is positive or not. Strategic Planning It is rare to find an organization running without a clear strategic plan because otherwise, the organization will not be focused on anything within a given timeframe. Strategic planning is one of the crucial management tool that enables an organization to have a dedicated focus of its energy and to ensure that all members of the team are geared towards achieving specific objectives set by the organization. Strategic planning is also essential in making professional assessment of the business environment so that informed adjustments can be made in response to the dynamics prevailing (GruI?nig, and KuI?hn 2005, p.43). Concisely, strategic planning is very important for the businesses in terms of making fundamental decisions and opting for actions that will guide and shape the organization in terms of what it partake on as well as what it focuses on in the future. The strategic nature of the process comes from the fact that it enables the business to consider options and opt for the most appropriate decision in preparing on how to make responses on the circumstances that faces a business in the dynamic environment. To be strategic thus requires that there is a clear conception of the main objectives of the organization, the resources related to the same organization, and then incorporating the two in a bid to be consciously responsive to situational dynamics (GruI?nig, and KuI?hn 2005, p.51). The whole process of strategic planning revolves in deliberate setting of achievable goals based on the background and proper inside knowledge of the organization. In this relation, in strategic planning there can be a desired future that the organization envisages; they may choose that future and then develop elaborate process of achieving that desired future. That is the whole sense of strategic planning in a business with future prospects. In keeping the process of strategic planning productive and focused, it is essential that discipline be inculcated to ensure consistency and order that is in pursuit of the goals. Several diverse questioning comes with the exercise and this enables the planners to do proper examination of the experience, test hypothesis, and assumptions, collect the present information for the purposes of relating them, and most importantly to aid them predict the kind of business environment they will be operating on in the future. Finally, this process culminates into making fundamental decisions and actions that would work best for the organization (GruI?nig, and KuI?hn 2005, p.72). It will be appreciated that it is practically impossible to do all the things that are supposed to be done, it is only possible that you make the best choice out of the number of choices that you have and this choices must be the best. This is because some decision are better than others and that is why strategic planning will help sieve the not important ones so that only the relevant one can be considered. Nursing Case Study The situation given in the case study faces a plethora of challenges and their future desire is to support all Nurses working at all Ministry of Health Premises uphold and attain new and modernized levels of understanding, expertise, and moral attitude that will be of great value in their practice, at the same time developing and encouraging professional integrity. If this is the strategic plan for the organization, then they have to consider several improvements given the nature of the organization. Firstly, the organization’s stakeholders and the management should have structured meeting that is aimed at discussing the current condition of the organization and giving it projection on where it should be given the ultimate goal that have been set. In this regard, they will have to SWOT the organization then start implementing some of the most important factors that must be I place according to the priority of the organization. In this case, they will have o consider having infrastructural facilities in the nursing school so that current and contemporary knowledge can be guaranteed as specified in the organizational long-term goals. This will involves considering having new buildings that are properly ventilated, availing adequate teaching resources in the organization, equipping the laboratory so that sufficient practical can be done, and supplying chairs that guarantees comfort and that which can be used for extended period of time without rendering discomfort. Having successfully completed the initial course, the second one will be ensuring that there is full compliance with the law and that the institution operates legally under the relevant ministry. This would also involve accreditation of the courses that are offered in the institution. The courses must be evaluated with the resources available and be authorized by the relevant government department for operation. After this, human resource mobilization will come in, the organization should have sufficient human resource that is able to run all the errands without work overload, this will ensure quality and timely delivery of services as envisaged in the prospect of this organization. Because nursing is one of the sectors that face serious dynamism on clinical matters, several structured meetings and workshop aimed at communicating recent developments in nursing should be encouraged so that the nurses are regularly updated on the contemporary practices to avoid lagging behind. In a round up, there should also be the availability of the database that will inform the nurses on the profile of other prominent nurses, the courses they took, and some other details that will be of importance to the nurses in making their career shine and achieve high standards as proposed in the strategic plan of the organization. This process as stated in the strategic planning requires discipline and focus to achieve; otherwise, it can be a mirage. Bibliography Bradberry, T, and Jean G. 2009. Emotional intelligence 2.0. San Diego, Calif.: TalentSmart,.. GruI?nig, R, and KuI?hn, R. 2005. Process-based strategic planning. 3rd ed. Berlin: Springer. Hames, R. D. 2007. The five literacies of global leadership: what authentic leaders know and you need to find out. Chichester, England: Jossey-Bass. Zeidner, M, Gerald M., and Richard D. R. 2009. What we know about emotional intelligence: how it affects learning, work, relationships, and our mental health. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Zuckerman, A. M. 2005. Healthcare strategic planning. 2nd ed. Chicago, Ill.: Health Administration Press. Read More