Assessing Leadership Strengths-Performance Behaviors of Transformational Leaders-Nursing Paper Examples-1

Leadership Assessment

There are several leadership assessments, tools, and reflection methods available to help you reflect on your skills, abilities, and talents in leadership. Many also focus on management skills, and some reveal personality characteristics (Assessing Leadership Strengths).

Assessing your leadership strengths is an important first step to discovering your leadership gaps and developing a plan to bridge those gaps. One area of distinction to make is that management skills and leadership strengths differ in focus. However, both are incorporated in transformational leadership roles from the executive suite to the bedside. A transformational leader cultivates leadership behaviors and management practices to create a role that transforms people and environments (Assessing Leadership Strengths).

The following table shows how leadership strengths and management skills combine to create transformational leadership.

Management Skills, Leadership Strengths, & Transformational (Leadership Assessing Leadership Strengths)

Leadership Strengths	Management Skills	Transformational Leadership
Drives innovation	Drives policy	Supports but validates policy using evidence and creative innovation
Guides, influences, motivates	Organizes, schedules	Strategically guides
Motivates, coaches, trusts	Plans, budgets, evaluates	Empowers teams to perform
Develops intuition and insight	Develops analytic abilities	Develops analytical insight
May not have developed management skills	May not have developed leadership strengths	Develops both management skills and leadership strengths
Power from leadership strengths	Power from position and authority	Power from influence
Enables	Orders	Guides
Develops personal agency	Develops organizational agency	Creates positive agency for both the team and the organization
Ethic of Care persona	Ethic of Justice persona	Balances the Ethics of Justice and Care in one leadership personality
Care-based	Rules-based	Change-based
Vision-focused	Resource-focused	Outcome-focused
Internal locus of control	External locus of control	Informed internal locus of control
Situational awareness	Policy awareness	Emotional intelligence

Now, stop for a moment and consider the leadership strengths you have just examined. Think also about the skillset of a manager. Although both leadership and management strengths and skills tend to cross over in transformational leadership, alone they do define distinct characteristics worth consideration (Assessing Leadership Strengths).

NR703 Self-Reflection: Performance Behaviors of Transformational Leaders

The NR703 Self-Reflection: Performance Behaviors of Transformational Leaders helps you define your transformational leadership strengths and talents. Through this reflection, you can better develop effectiveness as a leader (Assessing Leadership Strengths)..

Click on the following link and reflect on this representative list of leader and manager performance behaviors while thinking about the Strengths-to-Strategy interactive that follows in the next section of this lesson. You can use this reflection to evaluate your overall leadership effectiveness. Then, focus on just the leadership strengths that you feel are your strongest and weakest for the Strengths-to-Strategy Interactive (Assessing Leadership Strengths).

• Link (Word doc): NR703 Self-Reflection: Performance Behaviors of Transformational LeadersLinks to an external site.

After completing the reflection, consider your findings as you watch this video clip.

Reflect on Your Leadership Strengths (0:50)

The practical results of any leadership reflection are discovered when you apply them to those you lead. Therefore, self-reflection should focus on how best to use those results to modify your own leadership personality and behaviors. Moreover, throughout this course, you will have the opportunity to reflect on yourself as a leader in relation to different leadership topics and concepts. So, keep your mind open to change. Use the results from your NR703 Self-Reflection: Performance Behaviors of Transformational Leaders to reflect on your personal Johari window (Sharma & Sharma, 2019) (Assessing Leadership Strengths).

Johari Window Interactive Transcript

When you leave this course, we hope you will find that you have matured as a leader, regardless of your current role, through self-reflection and explorations—keep an open mind and be ready to change as you explore your leadership “windows”!

Leveraging Strengths as a Practice Scholar

One of the strengths of leadership is the ability to leverage skills and talents—both in yourself and in others. By developing your own Strengths-to-Strategy plan, you can better assess where strengths can be applied to compensate for areas that require development. The same dynamic can be applied to those for whom the leader manages (Assessing Leadership Strengths).

Leaders also leverage the strengths of others and their teams. Astrid Baumgardner (2017) is a successful career coach who offers three tips to leverage the strengths of the team to achieve the best outcomes:

• Know the strengths of your team members
• Have a strengths conversation at the outset of your project
• Allocate roles based on the strengths of your teammates (para. 8)

By knowing your strengths as a leader and the leadership strengths of your team, you can create your leadership Strengths-to-Strategy plan by identifying the following:

• Your leadership strengths
• Areas of opportunities for growth, improvement, and development in leadership (i.e., leadership gaps/shortcomings/weaknesses)
• Strategies to turn these opportunities into strengths
• Strategies for leveraging the strengths of others

An important Strengths-to-Strategy plan uses your strengths to leverage others’ strengths to provide a full complement of skills. Likewise, leveraging others’ strengths through delegation can often strengthen your own leadership gaps. As a leader, you may use this tool to create a Strengths-to-Strategy plan to support professional formation in others that you lead (Assessing Leadership Strengths).

Strengths-to-Strategy Plan

View the following activity to create your Strengths-to-Strategy plan. 

Strengths-to-Strategy Plan Interactive Transcript

Home Page

• To create your Strengths-to-Strategy Plan, click on each component located on the left-hand navigation bar. Provide your input to each question. 
• Download the completed Strengths-to-Strategy plan to use it as you develop your Week 1 discussion response. 
• At any point throughout this activity, you can review your plan by clicking Review Plan below. When you have completed your Strengths-to-Strategy plan, click Save below to download it (Assessing Leadership Strengths).

Leadership Strengths

• What are your leadership strengths as identified in the NR703 Self-Reflection: Performance Behaviors of Transformational Leaders?
• Describe 3 of your leadership strengths.
• At any point throughout this activity, you can review your plan by clicking Review Plan below.
• When you have completed your Strengths-to-Strategy plan, click Save below to download it.

Leadership Gaps/Opportunities

• What are your weak leadership areas, gaps, shortcomings, or opportunities for leadership growth?
• Describe 3 of your leadership weaknesses.
• At any point throughout this activity, you can review your plan by clicking Review Plan below.
• When you have completed your Strengths-to-Strategy plan, click Save below to download it (Assessing Leadership Strengths)..

Turning Gaps/Opportunities into Strengths

• What strategies will you use to turn your weaknesses, gaps, shortcomings, or growth opportunities into leadership strengths?
• Describe 3 strategies for turning your weaknesses, gaps, shortcomings, or growth opportunities into leadership strengths?
• At any point throughout this activity, you can review your plan by clicking Review Plan below.
• When you have completed your Strengths-to-Strategy plan, click Save below to download it (Assessing Leadership Strengths)..

Leveraging Others’ Strengths

• What strategies will you use to leverage others’ strengths?
• Describe 2 strategies for leveraging others’ strengths to provide a full complement of leadership skills.
• At any point throughout this activity, you can review your plan by clicking Review Plan below.
• When you have completed your Strengths-to-Strategy plan, click Save below to download it (Assessing Leadership Strengths)..