Discussion 2: Your Leadership Profile
From the beginning of educational, vocational, and career guidance ‘a clear understanding of yourself’ has been considered as crucial for making a ‘wise choice’ (Rossier, 2015). I always enjoy taking surveys or assessments such as this; personality surveys/assessments displaying character strengths and weaknesses, and no matter how many different surveys or assessments I may take, I always learn something new about myself. I almost wish I kept all the surveys I’ve ever taken to see how much I have changed over the years. The Gallup assessment was designed to identify your strengths so that an individual can see where they strive and where they might need some more development; knowing what your leading themes are is the first step to turning them into strengths (Gallup, 2017).
This assessment, my top five strengths are: empathy, consistency, harmony, positivity, and includer. I really wasn’t surprised by any of these traits, I think it describes my strengths pretty accurately. I was glad that I got strengths in three out of the four categories, those being executing, influencing, and relationship building; I was concerned that I did not have any strengths in the strategic thinking category, that is something that I am going to have to work on.
Two strengths that I would like to work on is empathy and harmony. Working in nursing, and being part of the ever-changing world, empathy is something that continues to be a necessity. Seeing the world through the eyes of others and understanding their point of view is required to truly see the world as they do, to care for them in a whole different way. I am very empathetic when it comes to my patients and individuals in my life, but it is a strength that can always develop more. I would like to also strengthen harmony, as to not decrease my own views to keep the peace; I never want to diminish my thoughts, beliefs, or opinions to make sure that there are no arguments.
Two characteristics and core values that I would like to straighten are self-assurance and consistency. I always second guess myself, my abilities, my thinking, my strengths; I hope to strengthen my self-assurance and have more confidence in myself so that I can apply my other strengths to help myself and others. I would also like to stay consistent in my beliefs, my opinions, and my thoughts. I am not consistent with these attributes because one of my strengths is harmony, decreasing my thoughts, opinions, and beliefs to avoid any confrontation.
Nursing is a profession in which communication, empathy, reliability, and attention to detail are essential, yet difficult to measure, in a potential employee (Cupit, Sukal, 2015).Working on the trauma floor I know that I am very empathetic to my patients, I am also a charge nurse on my floor and people look to me to help them deliver care to their patients. Staff members also look to me to help keep the peace between patients and nurses, and coworkers. I include every nurse in any plans that are made, both inside and outside of the hospital along with always staying positive. Staying positive is probably the most difficult where we work, but I always remind the staff that it could be worse, we could be a patient in the bed.
Cupit, T., & Sukal, M. F. (2015). Does Personality Matter in Nursing?: Assessing Suitability as Well as Eligibility When Hiring. Nurse Leader, 13(4), 44-47.
Gallup (Ed.). (2017). CliftonStrengths for students: Your strengths journey begins here. Simon and Schuster.
Rossier, J. (2015). Personality assessment and career interventions.
Discussion 2: Your Leadership Profile
Do you believe you have the traits to be an effective leader? Perhaps you are already in a supervisory role, but as has been discussed previously, appointment does not guarantee leadership skills.
How can you evaluate your own leadership skills and behaviors? You can start by analyzing your performance in specific areas of leadership. In this Discussion, you will complete Gallup’s StrengthsFinder assessment. This assessment will identify your personal strengths, which have been shown to improve motivation, engagement, and academic self-conference. Through this assessment, you will discover your top five themes—which you can reflect upon and use to leverage your talents for optimal success and examine how the results relate to your leadership traits.
To Prepare:
Complete the StrengthsFinder assessment instrument, per the instructions found in this Module’s Learning Resources.
Please Note: This Assessment will take roughly 30 minutes to complete.
NOTE: Please keep your report. You will need your results for future courses. Technical Issues with Gallup:
If you have technical issues after registering, please contact the Gallup Education Support group by phone at +1.866-346-4408. Support is available 24 hours/day from 6:00 p.m. Sunday U.S. Central Time through 5:00 p.m. Friday U.S. Central Time.
Reflect on the results of your Assessment, and consider how the results relate to your leadership traits.
By Day 3 of Week 5
Post a brief description of your results from the StrengthsFinder assessment. Then, briefly describe two core values, two strengths, and two characteristics that you would like to strengthen based on the results of your StrengthsFinder assessment. Be specific.
By Day 6 of Week 5
Respond to at least two of your colleagues on two different days by making recommendations for how they might strengthen the leadership behaviors profiled in their StrengthsFinder assessment, or by commenting on lessons to be learned from the results that can be applied to personal leadership philosophies and behaviors.
Learning Resources
Required Readings
Marshall, E., & Broome, M. (2017). Transformational leadership in nursing: From expert clinician to influential leader (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Springer.
Chapter 1, “Expert Clinician to Transformational Leader in a Complex Health Care Organization: Foundations” (pp. 7–20 ONLY)
Chapter 6, “Frameworks for Becoming a Transformational Leader” (pp. 145–170)
Chapter 7, “Becoming a Leader: It’s All About You” (pp. 171–194)
Duggan, K., Aisaka, K., Tabak, R. G., Smith, C., Erwin, P., & Brownson, R. C. (2015). Implementing administrative evidence-based practices: Lessons from the field in six local health departments across the United States. BMC Health Services Research, 15(1). doi:10.1186/s12913-015-0891-3. Retrieved from https://bmchealthservres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12913-015-0891-3
Resources for the StrengthsFinder Assessment Tool
Rath, T. (2007). Strengths Finder 2.0 – with Access Code.
Purchase the access code from the Walden bookstore. Then follow the instructions in the document “How to Access the Strengths Finder 2.0.
Document: How to Access Strengths Finder 2.0 (PDF)
Required Media
Laureate Education (Producer). (2014). Leadership [Video file]. Baltimore, MD: Author.
Accessible player –Downloads–Download Video w/CCDownload AudioDownload Transcript
Moore Foundation. (n.d.). Nurses share lessons in leadership. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLopRJPO6GaifsYPGP_jcWXZzU10H3AaX7
3 sources for this discussion
You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.
Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.
Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.
The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.
ADDITIONAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE CLASS
Discussion Questions (DQ)
Initial responses to the DQ should address all components of the questions asked, include a minimum of one scholarly source, and be at least 250 words.
Successful responses are substantive (i.e., add something new to the discussion, engage others in the discussion, well-developed idea) and include at least one scholarly source.
One or two sentence responses, simple statements of agreement or “good post,” and responses that are off-topic will not count as substantive. Substantive responses should be at least 150 words.
I encourage you to incorporate the readings from the week (as applicable) into your responses.
Weekly Participation
Your initial responses to the mandatory DQ do not count toward participation and are graded separately.
In addition to the DQ responses, you must post at least one reply to peers (or me) on three separate days, for a total of three replies.
Participation posts do not require a scholarly source/citation (unless you cite someone else’s work).
Part of your weekly participation includes viewing the weekly announcement and attesting to watching it in the comments. These announcements are made to ensure you understand everything that is due during the week.
APA Format and Writing Quality
Familiarize yourself with APA format and practice using it correctly. It is used for most writing assignments for your degree. Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for APA paper templates, citation examples, tips, etc. Points will be deducted for poor use of APA format or absence of APA format (if required).
Cite all sources of information! When in doubt, cite the source. Paraphrasing also requires a citation.
I highly recommend using the APA Publication Manual, 6th edition.
Use of Direct Quotes
I discourage overutilization of direct quotes in DQs and assignments at the Masters’ level and deduct points accordingly.
As Masters’ level students, it is important that you be able to critically analyze and interpret information from journal articles and other resources. Simply restating someone else’s words does not demonstrate an understanding of the content or critical analysis of the content.
It is best to paraphrase content and cite your source.
LopesWrite Policy
For assignments that need to be submitted to LopesWrite, please be sure you have received your report and Similarity Index (SI) percentage BEFORE you do a “final submit” to me.
Once you have received your report, please review it. This report will show you grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors that can easily be fixed. Take the extra few minutes to review instead of getting counted off for these mistakes.
Review your similarities. Did you forget to cite something? Did you not paraphrase well enough? Is your paper made up of someone else’s thoughts more than your own?
Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for tips on improving your paper and SI score.
Late Policy
The university’s policy on late assignments is 10% penalty PER DAY LATE. This also applies to late DQ replies.
Please communicate with me if you anticipate having to submit an assignment late. I am happy to be flexible, with advance notice. We may be able to work out an extension based on extenuating circumstances.
If you do not communicate with me before submitting an assignment late, the GCU late policy will be in effect.
I do not accept assignments that are two or more weeks late unless we have worked out an extension.
As per policy, no assignments are accepted after the last day of class. Any assignment submitted after midnight on the last day of class will not be accepted for grading.
Communication
Communication is so very important. There are multiple ways to communicate with me:
Questions to Instructor Forum: This is a great place to ask course content or assignment questions. If you have a question, there is a good chance one of your peers does as well. This is a public forum for the class.
Individual Forum: This is a private forum to ask me questions or send me messages. This will be checked at least once every 24 hours.
Rubric Detail
Select Grid View or List View to change the rubric’s layout.
Content
| Excellent | Good | Fair | Poor | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Main Posting |
Points Range: 45 (45%) – 50 (50%)
Answers all parts of the discussion question(s) expectations with reflective critical analysis and synthesis of knowledge gained from the course readings for the module and current credible sources. Supported by at least three current, credible sources. Written clearly and concisely with no grammatical or spelling errors and fully adheres to current APA manual writing rules and style. |
Points Range: 40 (40%) – 44 (44%)
Responds to the discussion question(s) and is reflective with critical analysis and synthesis of knowledge gained from the course readings for the module. At least 75% of post has exceptional depth and breadth. Supported by at least three credible sources. Written clearly and concisely with one or no grammatical or spelling errors and fully adheres to current APA manual writing rules and style. |
Points Range: 35 (35%) – 39 (39%)
Responds to some of the discussion question(s). One or two criteria are not addressed or are superficially addressed. Is somewhat lacking reflection and critical analysis and synthesis. Somewhat represents knowledge gained from the course readings for the module. Post is cited with two credible sources. Written somewhat concisely; may contain more than two spelling or grammatical errors. Contains some APA formatting errors. |
Points Range: 0 (0%) – 34 (34%)
Does not respond to the discussion question(s) adequately. Lacks depth or superficially addresses criteria. Lacks reflection and critical analysis and synthesis. Does not represent knowledge gained from the course readings for the module. Contains only one or no credible sources. Not written clearly or concisely. Contains more than two spelling or grammatical errors. Does not adhere to current APA manual writing rules and style. |
| Main Post: Timeliness |
Points Range: 10 (10%) – 10 (10%)
Posts main post by day 3.
|
Points Range: 0 (0%) – 0 (0%)
|
Points Range: 0 (0%) – 0 (0%)
|
Points Range: 0 (0%) – 0 (0%)
Does not post by day 3.
|
| First Response |
Points Range: 17 (17%) – 18 (18%)
Response exhibits synthesis, critical thinking, and application to practice settings. Responds fully to questions posed by faculty. Provides clear, concise opinions and ideas that are supported by at least two scholarly sources. Demonstrates synthesis and understanding of learning objectives. Communication is professional and respectful to colleagues. Responses to faculty questions are fully answered, if posed. Response is effectively written in standard, edited English. |
Points Range: 15 (15%) – 16 (16%)
Response exhibits critical thinking and application to practice settings. Communication is professional and respectful to colleagues. Responses to faculty questions are answered, if posed. Provides clear, concise opinions and ideas that are supported by two or more credible sources. Response is effectively written in standard, edited English. |
Points Range: 13 (13%) – 14 (14%)
Response is on topic and may have some depth. Responses posted in the discussion may lack effective professional communication. Responses to faculty questions are somewhat answered, if posed. Response may lack clear, concise opinions and ideas, and a few or no credible sources are cited. |
Points Range: 0 (0%) – 12 (12%)
Response may not be on topic and lacks depth. Responses posted in the discussion lack effective professional communication. Responses to faculty questions are missing. No credible sources are cited. |
| Second Response |
Points Range: 16 (16%) – 17 (17%)
Response exhibits synthesis, critical thinking, and application to practice settings. Responds fully to questions posed by faculty. Provides clear, concise opinions and ideas that are supported by at least two scholarly sources. Demonstrates synthesis and understanding of learning objectives. Communication is professional and respectful to colleagues. Responses to faculty questions are fully answered, if posed. Response is effectively written in standard, edited English. |
Points Range: 14 (14%) – 15 (15%)
Response exhibits critical thinking and application to practice settings. Communication is professional and respectful to colleagues. Responses to faculty questions are answered, if posed. Provides clear, concise opinions and ideas that are supported by two or more credible sources. Response is effectively written in standard, edited English. |
Points Range: 12 (12%) – 13 (13%)
Response is on topic and may have some depth. Responses posted in the discussion may lack effective professional communication. Responses to faculty questions are somewhat answered, if posed. Response may lack clear, concise opinions and ideas, and a few or no credible sources are cited. |
Points Range: 0 (0%) – 11 (11%)
Response may not be on topic and lacks depth. Responses posted in the discussion lack effective professional communication. Responses to faculty questions are missing. No credible sources are cited. |
| Participation |
Points Range: 5 (5%) – 5 (5%)
Meets requirements for participation by posting on three different days.
|
Points Range: 0 (0%) – 0 (0%)
|
Points Range: 0 (0%) – 0 (0%)
|
Points Range: 0 (0%) – 0 (0%)
Does not meet requirements for participation by posting on 3 different days.
|
| Total Points: 100 |
|---|
