Leadership Interview
Leadership Interview
Introduction:
The Chief Nursing Officer (CNO) at my clinical rotation has been a nurse for 35 years. BG took the role of CNO three years ago at the facility. BG responds to a rapidly changing healthcare environment, that has changed the hospital administration 3 times in ten years to Long Island NY. I have known BG from when she was an educator at my local hospital. A dedicated coach, supporter, facilitator, assessor and role model. She made education something staff looked forward to going to for EKG readings, and clinical learning experiences. BG has been there 13 years with me, moved up to obtain her family Nurse Practitioner degree, and Masters in Health Administration. Her goals were to build upon the new models of leadership trends that focus on unity of the health care team. Her goals are congruent with the culture of patient safety and staff safety.
Summary of interview questions and answers utilized:
1.What would you do if the work of the subordinate or team member did not meet your expectations? BG: “I would call them into a meeting.”
- A co-worker reveals to you she is calling in sick while actually taking a week’s vacation, how would you respond? BG: “This would be weighed upon their history of honesty and offensives. If it is a one-time event, I would give the benefit of the doubt and observe any pattern that can occur in the future. I would follow policy for sick calls and request proof of illness and necessity to miss work if there were a pattern.”
- How do you handle resistance when presenting a new policy to a team or work group? BG: “I would utilize support of the management team, including middle managers, and supervisors as advocates to support the rationale for change.”
- What would you do if the priorities on a project you were working on suddenly changed?
BG: “I would call a meeting to discuss the purpose, goals, and objectives of the plan and restructure positive organizational objectives with the team leaders.”
5.How do you deal with a worker that is difficult to maintain or build a successful working relationship with? BG: “I would call the leader most familiar with the individual and have her resolve the issue meeting with the individual. I would then expect the leader to follow up with me if the issues are not resolved.”
BG gave pertinent examples to each question on how she would handle the situation. The theme for many questions was private approaches and communication as described in the The responses to the questions were identified by four major categories that according to Roussel, et.al; (2016) there are four major categories that create a nurturing culture of empowerment and are especially important to employees: How things work and the processes employed; Where they work; When they work; and How to complete their work. (p.213) BG set expectations; defined responsibilities; was open and approachable to support the member’s ideas and dialogue; understood the staff; encouraged knowledge sharing; and encouraged innovation on behalf of the member. BG gave personal examples of how she had resistance with personal circumstances of patient outcomes and evidence based data to support why certain procedures don’t work and research to support the data in outcomes.
Leadership style:
BG is a democratic leader she is has demonstrated that she is easy to approach, influences her leaders to take charge and sells a team’s ideas to internal and external stakeholders. BG engages her staff to work together for the optimization of organizational goals. According to Roussel, Thompson, & Harris (2016), Influencing leaders take charge and sell relationship building have a distinct ability to create and engage a group whose sum is greater than its parts. (p.400) Strategic thinkers keep a group focused on the primary aim and stretch thinking toward future possibilities (Rath & Conchie, 2008) BG demonstrates a transformational style of leadership, . Bass (1990) described transformational leadership as shared governance by the leader and the followers. This approach is empowering, and the experience transforms the staff, the leader, and the organization. (Roussel et.al; 2016)
Current and Future effect of the leadership style on healthcare in the organization:
The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health (Institute of Medicine, 2010) stressed the need for nurses to become equal partners in health policy, decision making, and practice. (Roussel et. al; 2016) BG demonstrates that as the executive she empowers nurses to become equal partners in health policy, decision making and their practice. (p.57) This shared learning, building teams are a component of the AONE core competencies, not intuition, or commonplace. BG practices with the end vision of high-quality, safe patient care practices for the patient and her nursing staff that she is a leader in. In essence BG demonstrates that she is a strategist, with her interventions not just for the organization’s future, but analyzing relationships of the system to the external environment. Determining the ability of the system to respond and adapt in a sustainable way, and translate that relationship and ability into language has meaning for those who must do the work of the organization (Watkins 2012). According to Porter-O’Grady, & Mallack (2015), “the leaders job is to describe the change with language that allows the workers to understand its value and how it will affect their own efforts.”(p,24) BG Leads people by influence. The transformational leader “must lead people to wher they need to be to meet the demands of the future” (Wolf, Triolo, and Ponte, 2008, p.202).BG demonstrates relying on the intelligence of her team, not just the people only at the top of the pyramid.
Conclusion:
Change is essential and the theme when it comes to the future success of our organizations. Leaders need to turn around the current trends and create a system that yields optimal obtainable levels of health care at lower costs in organizations. BG is one that demonstrates the collaboration of interprofessional team and influences all stakeholders to participate and design health system of the future. BG is a courageous executive that represents nursing who communicates and comes to the board table fully prepared to design the new health care system utilizing the AONE competencies and evidence-based practice along with her advanced nurse practice leadership role in administration.