As I reflect on the vast amount of quality content shared in this course, I was challenged to select two course learnings that have had the biggest impact to my practice. With much deliberation, I decided to focus on the transformational servant leadership approach and team leadership.

The most significant impact to my practice is the shift in my consciousness to not only practice a transformational servant leadership approach but to live out those values in all facets of my life. It is about putting people first, nurturing development and building a community that “feel a sense of unity and relatedness” (Northouse, 2018, p.230) towards a shared purpose. Motivating and empowering individuals to not only reach their greatest potential but believe in themselves to go beyond what is expected of them and excel. As a leader, it is modeling the behaviors you want to see and increasing your influence ability to achieve loyalty and respect from those around you. To reach that level of influence where people follow you because of who you are and what you represent. My awareness of the principles of transformational servant leadership and how they impact followers has reshaped my priorities as a leader. In addition, it has also provided me the knowledge necessary to become a more effective person, as well as enhanced my leadership competencies on a greater scale.

Team leadership and effectiveness was another concept from this course that had a tremendous impact on me. I have spent most of my life being a part of teams, from participating and coaching sports, to working on surgical teams, to now leading a team of nurses. Experiencing both success and failures of team dynamics and not really having a strong foundation of the theory has always put me at a bit of a disadvantage. What this course has provided me with is some of the theory behind team efficacy, specifically enabling conditions of group effectiveness and characteristics of team excellence (Northouse, 2018). Not only will this learning assist me in evaluating team performance but the Hill Model for Team Leadership (Northouse, 2018, p.374) is a great tool that I can use in my practice to assess the health of the teams I work with. I found this model to be valuable because it will help diagnose areas of weakness and also guide me to make relational or task leadership decisions. These in turn, will be followed by appropriate internal or external actions to re-establish equilibrium within the team and support team excellence in all settings.

The crowded hours come to you always one moment at a time. That is the only way they can come. The day may bring many tasks, many problems, strains, but invariably they come in single file.
You want to gain emotional poise? Remember the hourglass, the grains of sands dropping one by one…. (Watson, 1951, p. 221)

Daneen

References

Northouse, P. (2019). Leadership: Theory and practice (8th ed). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications

Watson, L. E. (1951). Light from Many Lamps. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, Inc.