Leadership Interview - Essay Example

LEADERSHIP I interviewed one of my co-workers from a few years ago, when I was working at a healthcare facility that dealt mostly with female addicts and substance abusers. My coworker named X was the manager of the nurse’s station, and she was very inspiring to me and the other workers, because she never lost her patience, and she got along with everyone, coworkers and clients alike. And many of these people weren’t the easiest people to get along with. X had been working there as a manager for three years when I started, and she was still there when I moved and left that job.

We kept in touch through email, and that is how I contacted them for the interview. X gave me a recommendation on my resume last year, and it was very complimentary. With X, though, you never think that she is giving a compliment just to be nice. There is something very real and genuine about her leadership, and although she didn’t say as much during the interview, I suspect it’s because X doesn’t view nursing leadership as a role to play like an actor: she is just herself, and it works.

“Whereas traditional authority clearly is inherently conservative, the rise of a charismatic leader may well change.” (Ritzer, p. 129). X is not a very conservative leader.Leadership applicationIn defining effective leadership, there is the problem of defining universal traits in relation to an organizational environment that is built primarily on the differentiation of individuals. That is, research regarding leadership strategies may show that there is no one clear set of characteristics that defines people-oriented leadership like the kind used by X, because there is so much variance in individuals.

“There are no universal traits that predict leadership in all situations. Rather, traits appear to predict leadership in selective situations. Traits predict behavior more in weak situations than in strong situations” (Robbins, 2003, p. 315). X tends to be charismatic and use her naturally attractive personality to get along with clients and coworkers in her position as a nursing leader. This puts a “fresh spin on the issues, engendering a feeling of hope and even reverence in the charismatic leader’s followers and the public.

Innovations and changes intended to improve patient outcomes. These same technological advances require nurses to demonstrate knowledge” (Dawes, 2000). One point that X made during the interview was that technology has changed since we were coworkers, and she stated that it was more important than ever for nurses to be advocates of new technology. According to X, nurses cannot just sit back, they must learn how to use the new developments. Optimally, these new developments could also be fit into increased training programs which do not necessarily require the nurse to travel long distances and take that much time out of their schedule to complete educational and training programs: we talked about this during the interview as well.

X has been influential to me, but her type of leadership is difficult to emulate. It doesn’t’ stop me from trying, however. This can also be drawn out into an external organizational environment, highlighting examples of existing organizations that are going through a process of differentiating different kinds of leadership. There must be a differentiation made between positional and dynamic leadership in the organizational environment, and this differentiation often falls along the lines of comparing people-oriented and positional leadership.

REFERENCEDawes, B.S.G. (2000, April). Extending nursing care into the world of technology. AORN Journal. Ritzer, P. (2002). Charismatic leadership. Organizational Dynamics. Robbins, S. (2003). Organizational Behavior. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.