Discussion: Leadership Profile

The StrengthsFinder assessment is a personal development tool developed by Gallup Education, which provides an individual with their top 5 strengths. Focusing on your strengths on a daily basis has been shown to have profound positive effects on an individual’s personal and professional well-being (Comer et al., 2019). My strengths, according to the StrengthsFinder assessment, are focus, consistency, strategy, achiever, and responsibility. Being focused means that I regularly set goals that act as my compass, regularly evaluate actions to determine whether they help move in the right direction, and tends to be impatient with tangents, obstacles, and delays. Being consistent means that I value balance, I am keenly aware of the need to treat people the same, and believe that people function in an environment where rules are clear. Being strategic means that I am able to sort through the clutter and find the best route, being an achiever means that I have a constant need for achievement, and responsibility means that I take ownership of anything I am committed to and become emotionally bound to follow it through to completion.

The two core values that I would like to strengthen, based on the results of the StrengthsFinder assessment, are honesty and loyalty. The results indicate that I am a dependable person because of my consistency, taking ownership of others, desire to achieve, and establishing the right direction. Because others rely on me for all these, it means that I need to be trusted hence; the value of honesty. Honesty is important in gaining stronger support from employees and allows the right solutions to be applied (Karthikeyan, 2018). I can effectively lead others if I am loyal to my job and role as a leader. Loyalty sets leadership apart from management and enables leaders to continuously remind their team of organizational goals and vision (Steinmann et al., 2018).

The strengths that I intend to strengthen further, based on the StrengthsFinder assessment results, are accountability and persistence. The health care setting represents an important setting where results play an important role. A focus on higher and positive results is the goal of healthcare providers. Working on my strengths as an accountable and persistent leader can help me to remain accountable in all my tasks and initiatives, and be successful in promoting positive outcomes, respectively. In addition to this, leader effectiveness ensures that organizational objectives are carried out in accordance with organizational vision and mission, implying the need to remain accountable and an achiever.

The characteristics that I would like to strengthen based on the StrengthsFinder assessment results are effective negotiation skills and self-awareness. The results indicate that I have dependability values, implying that I am likely to undertake positions where I am supposed to lead others in navigating various situations.  Having good negotiation skills helps in creating good relationships and understanding the interests of those that are being led with the aim of finding ways of satisfying those interests. This strategy can help in influencing others towards the achievement of success or common goals. According to the results, I am aware that my subconscious mind continuously absorbs information and creates possible options. Being self-aware will help me to identify my strengths and weaknesses, and ways of addressing them so that I can continually improve on my skills as a leader.

References

Comer, R., Schweiger, T., & Shelton, P. (2019). Impact of students’ strengths, critical thinking skills and disposition on academic success in the first year of a PharmD program. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, 83(1), 6499. https://doi.org/10.5688/ajpe6499

Karthikeyan, C. (2018). A meta-analytical study on leadership integrity: a leadership ethics perspective. Journal Homepage: http://www. ijmra. us, 7(4). IJMRA-11476.pdf

Steinmann, B., Klug, H., & Maier, G. (2018). The path is the goal: How transformational leaders enhance followers’ job attitudes and proactive behavior. Frontiers in Psychology, 9. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02338