Southern New Hampshire University Perspectives on Leadership Discussion and Responses

Discussion 2: Perspectives on Leadership

What is a leader? This may seem like a simple question, but an individual’s response to the question may depend on the individual and his or her situation. Leadership contains elements of personality, personal characteristics, skills, and knowledge. Leadership can be demonstrated within human services organizations as well as in the organizations’ interactions with stakeholders in the community.

As you consider all you have explored about leadership in this course, what new perspectives have you gained regarding this topic? Consider how you might apply your discoveries to your career planning and development.

By Day 4

Post an analysis of how your personal definition of leadership has changed or expanded since you began this course. Explain at least one significant idea or experience from this course that may be of value in preparing you for a future supervisory or administrative role.

Support your post with specific references to the resources. Be sure to provide full APA citations for your references.

By Day 6

Read a selection of your colleagues’ posts.

Respond by Day 6 to at least two colleagues with a thoughtful question or suggestion that builds on your colleagues’ post

Colleague 1: Sonya

     My definition of a leader is to obtain the necessary leadership skills, characteristics, and styles to succeed in any organization. My leadership style has not changed since the beginning of this course. I, however, am more knowledgeable concerning leadership skills, characteristics, and styles. I have identified what my strengths and weakness were. As a result, I will endeavor to be more effective in my organization. One significant idea of value to my future leadership role was knowing and understanding the use of “self” and teaching and mentoring others in this area. McTighe (2011) stated supervisors must discuss and demonstrate the use of “self” to their supervisees. The author also said that social workers must understand one’s “self” in terms of their values, beliefs, and roles before being effective as therapists.

Reference

McTighe, J. (2011). Teaching the use of self through the process of clinical supervision. 

    Clinical Social Work Journal, 39(3), 301–307. 

Colleague 2: JOY

An analysis of how your personal definition of leadership has changed or expanded since you began this course. Explain at least one significant idea or experience from this course that may be of value in preparing you for a future supervisory or administrative role.

My personal definition of leadership has expanded since I begin this course. Effective leadership dictates the direction or changes needed for the agency. The lack of leadership within an agency promotes ineffective changes and limits the agency ability to chart its own direction. Leadership seeks constructive change and management is about establishing order (Northouse, 2021). This class further broadened my knowledge on how to not only be a leader, but how to be an effective leader by helping me discover my leadership style, important traits, and skills. I definitely gained a plethora of knowledge during this course.

One significant experience from this course that may be of value in preparing me for a future supervisory or administrative role is the Leadership Assessment Project which consist of questionnaires. Each questionnaire helps me explore the following: my leadership style, skills, character, traits, strengths and weaknesses. This information I would build on and it will help me be better prepared for the journey ahead.

Reference

Northouse, P. G. (2021). Introduction to Leadership: Concepts and practice (5th ed). Sage

             Publications, Inc.