Leadership and Emotional Intelligence - Assignment Example

 Leadership and Emotional Intelligence Introduction In the social sciences, the aspect of leadership is one of the most discussed topics, being a source of much controversy owing to the two-way understanding that it presents. Researchers on the issue have settled on two potential explanations to the understanding of leadership; leadership constructed from an individual’s characteristics, and leadership created from an individual’s behavior. In the first event, it is supported that a person’s characteristics such as talents, skills, personal traits, and demographics go a long way in predicting one’s nature as a leader. On the other hand, others state that leadership is constructed from beyond personal traits, and is determined by a person’s conduct, or behavior. Owing to this standoff between scholars, several theories have been developed in trying to understand the issue such as the Trait theory and Skills Approach. To elaborate on the understanding of both approaches, the following study text will analyze both perspectives of understanding leadership while giving strengths, limitations, and applications of the same in real life. Behavioral/ Style Perspective to Leadership The article Leadership in Public Health: A guide to advocacy for public health association highlights several perspectives which apply the behavioral perspective to leadership in the public health context. One particular issue describes the period of the 1980’s in Canada, where the Canadian Public Health Association (CPHA) realized that HIV/AIDS would become a national catastrophe if nothing was done to curb its spread in Canada. HIV/AIDS has affected the entire population, and particularly homosexual men. In the light of these discoveries, the CPHA realized that most of the new infections were possibly emerging because the affected population was either unaware of the channels through which HIV was spread, or were being ignorant of the same. The CPHA therefore embarked on engaging several government and non-governmental bodies in contributing opinions on what the best approaches of curbing the disease were. The liaising came up with two major strategies of curbing HIV/AIDS; coming up with strong HIV/AIDS prevention components and informing the wider public about them, and two, providing sufficient support to the affected or infected persons. These approaches largely involved the federal and provincial governments in ensuring that the people were made aware of what would expose them to HIV, and how to avoid being affected. In addition, the people were educated on how they should alter their lives upon infection, and how to positively live with the affected (CPHA, 2009). Evaluation One weakness about this approach is that it is effective only in situations where a particular condition or problem has been observed over time, and thus cannot be applied in emergency situations. This is because the observations require of the leaders to sit down and devise a solution. In a more public health context, the theory is weak in that rather than focus on one’s entire medical history, if focuses only on the present conditions while ignoring the rest. The third weakness is that the approach focuses on groups, and not individuals, and because of that, it is at times impossible to address personal issues of people. The result if this is that while assuming that a problem has been solved from this approach, the leaders miss out on solving issues which affect people at their personal levels. Finally, leadership, or solutions obtained from mere behavioral evaluations may be ineffective in the event that in a certain scenario, observations cannot be made. This simply means that the above approach will be ineffective. The behavioral approach to leadership has strengths as well. One of them is that after a leader or leading group such as the CPHA makes an evaluation of a particular group and from it learn its behaviors, then a single solution made from the observation can address the general issue from one perspective. This means that the issue can be tackled faster and in large-scale. The second advantage is that owing to its approach of not considering the past history, or reason for the emergence of an issue, then such leadership keeps past mistakes, pains, or affecting issues buried. This is important in securing one’s comfort. For instance, on the issue of HIV/AIDS, this approach would not go into in-depth details of seeking to tell from where someone acquired the infection. Some people would be more comfortable in keeping such details private or unspoken of. This approach is similar to the Trait and Behavioral theories in that it focuses on the physiological, demographic, personality, intellectual, social, and task-related aspects of one (Derue, Nahrgang, Wellman, & Humphrey, 2011). These aspects are “the current” notables about one, and are similar to the public health approach which does not dig into the past but focuses on the present. Again, it utilizes more of a behavior than intelligence in its working. The two are also similar in that they work by generalizing the traits or discovered findings. Emotional intelligence In leadership, emotional intelligence is that style of leadership in which the leader exercises both self-awareness, and considerations for those around them. In short, an emotionally-intelligent leader will be aware of his/her actions, and what effect they are bound to have on the people around them. In the article Nurses’ Emotional Intelligence Impact on the Quality of Hospital Services discusses the role of emotional intelligence in creating a lasting and effective correlation between the service provider and patient. The article defines emotional intelligence as “the potential to feel, use, communicate, recognize, remember, describe, identify, learn from, manage, understand and explain emotions” (Ezzatabadi, et al., 2012). The article provides its findings, which were derived from a study conducted on nurses in which the observations were used in coming up with the conclusion that emotional intelligence is paramount in determining the performance of nurses at public health centers. This would therefore explain why some health centers provide better health services than others, and why some patients opt to remain loyal or abstain from some of these medical centers. In the article, it was discovered that hospital managers (leaders) who provided optimum (desirable) working conditions for their nurses were directly responsible for the success of such health centers. One of the results of such is job satisfaction, which means that the workers remain committed and motivated in doing their work, and as such, their full focus is on their jobs. Job satisfaction originates from pleasurable emotional status. The other aspect affected by emotional intelligence is the communication skills of the nurses. It is sensible that a happy person is less likely to be arrogant, sulky, or possess any negative feelings or reactions. On the other hand, an unhappy nurse is more likely to be sulky, non-performing, and more vulnerable to committing medical blunders. These two scenarios explain the role of emotional intelligence in communication. For a manager who ensures that the communication amongst their nurses is admirable and effective, then he/she is assured of better inter-employee communication as well as patient-nurse relationships. It is therefore sufficient to state from this article that in the modern world, the rate of emotional intelligence largely affects the outcome of service provided at healthcare centers. Evaluation In the above scenario, the emotional intelligence displayed by the managers at the health centers is that for the successful ones, they maintained good working conditions for their nurses thus kept them happy and focused on their jobs. In this, they showed concern for their subordinates. The other one is that they ensured good communication existed between the nurses, and themselves. In so doing, there was consideration for the nurses’ opinions, views, and concerns, and this kept them issue-free. Finally, the managers ensured that there were good communication channels between their nurses and the visiting patients. In so doing, the health centers would become of interconnected channels, thus the effectiveness in both working, and satisfying the patients. This coincides with Borkowski, Deckard, Weber, Padron & Luongo (2011) who state that leadership is key when it comes to determining the effectiveness of the U.S. health care system. The final outcome was good service dissemination by the medical service providers. This is in turn attributed to the emotional intelligence of the leaders (managers) at the centers. In short, the leaders acknowledged that the emotional state of every party at the centers relied on their emotional status, thus strived to ensure that optimum conditions existed. By ensuring that the nurses were happy with their working environments, the managers were able to keep them focused on their jobs, and not in fighting-off other destructive issues. Again by ensuring that there was communication between the nurses with higher authorities and their visiting patients, the managers created a unified environment in which everyone could raise their feelings or emotions and in having them heard; they feel free. The result ofthis is that everyone is satisfied at the end of the day, thus a health center earns reputation as being effective and up to its task. Conclusion In the study above, the two approaches to leadership have been evaluated from a public health perspective. Although both are aimed at ensuring effective leadership is attained, they differ in their understanding of the creation of leadership. They both refer to Salmela, Ericksson, & Fagerstrom’s (2011) conclusion that “leadership is about direction: transforming mental and physical resources into the fulfillment of goals, shaping an environment where people are motivated and governing processes where co-workers actively participate”. The behavioral approach believes in the observation or outward conduct of one and argues that a leader can be constructed from coexisting with their surroundings, and that the immediate observation is what determines a leader. On the other hand, the emotional approach defines a leader as a construction of understanding one’s emotional nature and what effect it is bound to have on the people around them. All in all, both approaches prove their effectiveness from their application in solving public health matters, and the overall conclusion is that both approaches are effective, only differing in the situations where they are executed. References Borkowski, N., Deckard, G., Weber, M., Padron, L. & Luongo, S. (2011). “Leadership development initiatives underlie individual and system performance in a US public healthcare delivery system.” Emerald Insight, 24 (4). Canadian Public Health Association (CPHA). (2009). “Leadership in Public Health: A guide to advocacy for public health associations”. CPHA. Derue, D., Nahrgang, J., Wellman, N. & Humphrey, S. (2011). “Trait and Behavioral Theories of Leadership: An Intergration and Meta-Analytic Test of Their Relative Validity.” Personnel Psychology. (64). Ezzatabadi, M., Bahrami, M., Hadizadeh, F., Arab, M., Nasiri, S., Amiresmaili, M. & Tehrani, G. (2012, Dec.). “Nurses’ Emotional Intelligence Impact on the Quality of Hospital Services.” NCBI. Retrieved on 27 June, 2014 from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3587863/ Salmela, S., Ericksson, K. & Fagerstrom, L. (2011). “Leading Change: a three-dimensional model of nurse leaders’ main tasks and roles during a change process.” Journal of Advanced Nursing. 68 (2). Read More