Category: LDRS500 (Page 1 of 4)

It was a great experience to be a part of this learning module which was very new to me and most of the terminologies were unknown. However, the studies will definitely have a positive impact on my professional career as well as personal life. The lessons from ‘Northouse’ gave fare idea about the types of leadership and its characteristics whereas the stories from the book ‘light from many lamps’ gave inspiration and morals for life. As a beginner in professional career, I would like to carry forward all the learnings which will certainly help me to become a good leader.

Stone et al. (2004), puts forth the differences in leadership styles that, “a core difference between transformational leadership and other styles of leadership is the leader’s flexibility and focus on the improvement of the healthcare organization and commitment towards organizational objectives (p.6). Reading was never my hobby, but this course brought out the reader in me. I loved reading the short stories from Light from many lamps, that lightened up my transit journey. I saw myself friendlier and more talkative to random people I met amidst my short travels and developed a mind to explore more and more. Having had this trait from beginning, I developed it further during this course. Northouse (2010) describes integral leaders as “people who adhere to a strong set of principles and take responsibility for their actions. Leaders with integrity inspire confidence in others because they can be trusted to do what they say they are going to do” (p. 25). I gained lot of integrity, confidence from feeling intimidated and worried about my writing skills, moreover I have shared my strength to my friends who find doing online course challenging. The number of times I had redone my paper with support from professor, developed my integrity and strong willingness to make it to the best of my ability rather than giving up. I loved a bible verse since childhood, from Matthew 25:40 ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’ I kept on singing this line whenever I was asked to sing a devotional song which began with ‘what so ever you do, to the least of my people, that you do unto me.’ I tried doing good and to be humble servant of Lord in what ever I do, likewise I wished the same from a leaders’ perspective. If I would be a leader in near future, I would be following this principle and explore the thought of a colleague or other employee on how they would perceive me as a leader. I would accomplish my goal, if I conquer the heart and minds of my colleagues with a positive impact and see myself to be a leader of how I expected my leader to be. This course gave me a structure to choose a pathway and I chose to be a follower of transformational servant leadership approach. I never knew this word, but now I am familiar with it!!!

References

Northouse, P. G. (2010). Leadership: Theory and practice. (5th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications

Watson, L. E., (1988) Light from many lamps. New York: Simon & Schuster Inc.

The world is moving faster with the advancement in technology that has brought drastic changes in many fields, especially in business. John Smart talks about the current day practice of people not following the rules anymore in any institution. Managers do what they feel is right. The 3Ps model Possible, Preferable and Probable futures are three types of Foresight management. Possible includes ideation and innovation which are on the evolutionary side of an institution or an organization, Preferable includes vision, strategy and planning which are done by the leaders and Probable includes forecasting, risk management and prediction which are on the developmental side of an institution or organisation. Innovation, management and foresight are necessary for any entrepreneur.

According to Jack Ma, the CEO of Alibaba, a budding entrepreneur must be focused and must believe in his/her dreams. One must keep their dream alive. Mistakes are bound to happen but that is how you learn. He stresses on the being ready to face rejection. Empowering others is also very important to be successful. To Jack Ma, customers are number one priority, followed by the employees and the last being shareholders in his business strategy.

Canada Post is one among the many organizations that has been obviously affected by advancement in technology. The rise of E-commerce had increased Canada Post’s parcel division, but it too faced challenges with its infrastructure and inability to maintain the same services as large international couriers and the private sector (Government of Canada, 2016). Canada Post came up with a five-point action plan which includes moving towards community mailboxes, introducing tiered postage pricing, and strengthening the retail network. Moreover, they streamlined operations to increase efficiency and addressed the cost of labour through attrition and collective bargaining (Government of Canada, 2016). They also became more digitally mobile by introducing an app through which customers can track their packaging, look up postal codes, locate post offices, find out rates for letters and packages, manage their bills, and buy cards and postcards with custom images (Begin, n.d.).

As per Government of Canada (2016), Canada Post has a business line referred to as other services, which includes several small-scale products and services. In 2015, this category accounted for about 5% of Canada Post’s operating revenue. Businesses, governments and individual consumers are the major customers. Few of the products in this business line are: epost, which allows users to receive, pay and manage bills in one place online, remittance services that includes MoneyGram, which is an electronic money transfer service available at any Canada Post location at competitive costs and exchange rates, postal money orders that are certified cashable documents sent through the mail to transfer funds locally or internationally, another aspect is mail redirection, which allows individuals and businesses to have mail forwarded following a change of address and data products for direct marketing mail such as postal code data for targeted marketing mailing lists.

I think their reliance on technology, especially for communication and transacting business should have been implemented earlier and expanded the digitization of their infrastructure, company systems, and public engagement more deeply than they did. Though they conducted researches in 2016, they should have done some strategic prudent preparation decades ago. There still needs to be some time to do some innovative thinking around new programs and services that will take them into the next generation to be more effective.

References:

Begin, D. (n.d.) Tool of the week: Canada post staying relevant through technology. Thornley Fallis. Retrieved from: https://thornleyfallis.com/tool-of-the-week-canada-post-staying-relevant-through-technology/

Government of Canada. (2016). Canada post in the digital age: Discussion paper. Retrieved from:https://www.tpsgc-pwgsc.gc.ca/examendepostescanada-canadapostreview/rapport-report/consult-eng.html#a1

Rohrbeck, R., Kum, M. (2018). Corporate foresight and its impact on firm performance: A longitudinal analysis. Technical Forecasting and Social Change. (129)105-116: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2017.12.013

Regarding recognition and a sense of belonging, I am proud and privileged to work in the organization that I do. We are democratic, and my assessment would be that we as nurses, may it be in nursing leadership, we do a fairly good job of modelling this. Most of the departments are lead by women, our leadership team is mostly female, and our staff team is made up of more women than men. This could be due to working in a health care field in a Catholic missionary elderly residential care home and the majority of health care team comprises of nurses, health care workers that basically forms a huge female dominancy. Nugent, Pollock, & Travis (2016) in their Catalyst report states that employees, regardless of gender, who experience a sense of uniqueness and a sense of belonging, feel that they are being included within the organization.

I could improve recognition and a sense of belonging for women in my organization is by encouraging staff to share about experiences when they felt intimidated as well as comfortable with their effort and discuss these experiences, and then use these experiences to help form a common vision of inclusion (Nugent, 2016, pg.no 7). As per this, we could make necessary changes in areas to make all staff feel encompassed. We could ask their opinions and additional ways for staff to give feedback. Allocate time for personal meeting with a leader to offer feedback, which perhaps would receive more honest feedback from staff who do not feel comfortable speaking up in public.

Many organizations and non-health care fields don’t always give the first priority to women for leadership roles, but I understand that in some instances there has been an effort to get more women involved in higher levels, unfortunately women aren’t first option when compared to men. Some potential reasons for this could be due to the safety, amount of travel required, lack of childcare options provided for women who are mothers, or it could be due to gender bias against women in high levels of leadership regardless of the organization openly valuing women in leadership. This system could be eradicated by collecting data about why women who have been offered these leadership positions have turned them down and then revamp the positions to make them more inclusive (Nugent et al., 2016, p. 11). Another effort could be discussing with leaders about the lack of women in these positions because “talk leads to action” (Catalyst, 2013). Moreover, having the current leaders take a test like the Implicit Association Test offered by Harvard University so that they can be ethical leaders who are honest with themselves and open with others (Northouse, 2016, p. 346) if an implicit bias does exist.

References:

Catalyst (2013, September 3). Talk Leads to Action. Retrieved from https://www.catalyst.org/knowledge/talk-leads-action

Nugent, J. S., Pollack, A., & Travis, D. J. (2016). The day to day experiences of workplace inclusion and exclusion. Retrieved from http://www.catalyst.org/system/files/the_day_to_day_experiences_of_workplace_inclusion_and_exclusion.pdf

Northouse, P. G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and practice, Seventh Edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

In Northouse (2018) case study 15.3- Pregnancy as a Barrier to Job Status, Marina experiences a barrier to her job status because of gender prejudice and discernment though she is a managing director for a manufacturing company for ten years and has worked extremely hard. She is highly motivated and committed to her work and she proved to achieve the promotion in the company as a top executive. Marina was reluctant to share the news about her pregnancy with her boss, Roy as she was aware about the history of the firm releasing women prior to or shortly after giving birth. Marina is fearful and anxious about the possibility of losing her position, thus pregnancy was a barrier to her achievement. Moreover, lack of “commitment to employment and motivation” (Northouse, 2018, pg.no. 408) are implied when the news is delivered to Roy which further supports gender biases for women in leadership roles.

Roy’s response highlights these gender biases and discrimination. “I knew this was going to happen sooner or later; it always does and there’s no point in talking about this now. We’ll think about it later” (Northouse, 2018, pg. no. 420), was is response despite wishing her a great motherhood and offering a thorough plan to distribute her work while she is off, he communicated with a hidden agenda of discrimination. What Roy should have said in response to Marina’s news, additionally to congratulations, would be to ask her plans prior to and after her leave by following a transformational servant leadership approach to understand Marina’s situation and needs. Discussion on planning to distribute her work and seeking to understand her needs and goals on a professionally and personal level, with the organizational policy and protocols would have been the appropriate response.

Roy should have ensured that Marina’s work will be covered in her absence and should have included Marina in the process of assigning her work to someone else or asked her suggestion for a colleague for replacement. This ensures that her work would be done effectively and provide her the comfort and encouragement. Conducting a professional growth and development planning session prior to Marina’s leave gives assurance that her goals for professional advancement won’t fall apart and discussing her career objectives and how she plans to reach them helps eradicate those gender bias about pregnancy as a physical and emotional barrier for career accomplishments.

In this case study, organizational manager was too authoritative and is preoccupied with discriminative thoughts on pregnant women in leadership positions. To eradicate this, legalities around the Family and Medical Leave Act should be front and center for an organization (Northouse, 2018). Senior administrators and division heads should have this legal education embedded into their practice and organizational policy and immediate action must be taken if law is violated. Moreover, training sessions on rights of employees and educational seminars to bring awareness to gender discrimination in the workplace is necessary. To wrap up, a change in an organization to adopt a “family-friendly reform” (Northouse, 2018, pg.no. 413) to ensure job protected maternity leaves and dismiss myths as pregnancy being a barrier to job status would benefit Marina and other pregnant women in this organization. Being pregnant isn’t a curse, it’s a boon that molds a woman to be more responsible, affectionate and protective. If she is strong enough to give life, guide another human from the scratch, she is already a great leader and will excel as a leader if given a chance to be in the eligible position keeping aside the gender discrimination. Remember, a mother is the first teacher and a mother who is educated, knowledgeable, skillful and experienced will be more fruitful.

Reference

Northouse, P. G. (2018). Leadership: Theory and practice, Seventh Edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, pg.no. 408 – 420.