Personal Philosophy in Leadership

Introduction

The way someone looks at themselves as a leader is a leadership philosophy. This philosophy assists leaders when making decisions, how they act in certain situations and how they think. Most philosophies are subjective by external and internal forces. Leaders can change the way they lead by changing their leadership philosophy. As an individual grows or gains more experience their leadership philosophy can also change. Leaders need to search and reveal upon themselves their personal morals, values and assumptions about leadership.

All leadership philosophies progress over a period of time. Experiences both positive and philosophy in leadership is while addressing what role a health care leader should play, what leadership theory they should follow and why leaders should follow that theory (UOP, 2011). This paper will also describe the writer's current sphere of influence, explaining how she is a leader in her current position and how she applies the philosophy she describes (UOP, 2011). Last but not least, the writer will address how she envisions the use of informal, formal, positive, and negative power as it applies to her personal philosophy of leadership (UOP, 2011).

Personal Philosophy in Leadership

A key attribute in any industry in today's environment is leadership. To be a successful leader communication is the main key between the leader and the employee. Every leader needs to communicate their core values as well as the organizations core values and the leader's philosophy of leadership. A successful leader also has to have a vision for where he or she wants to be in the future (Daughtery, 2009). Leaders should also have strategies on how he, or she, is going to accomplish objectives; a plan on how to achieve a goal (Daughtery, 2009).

This writer's leadership philosophy combines relationships, understanding the organizations goals and vision, knowledge and diversity, and coaching and developing. Looking at this writer's first part of her leadership philosophy is the building of relationships. In order to be an effective leader relationship must be built with the leader's employees. This part of the philosophy can be a little bit hard because of the different personalities that everyone has. As a leader employee's need to understand the leader's vision, the employee's need to feel that the leader is upfront and honest with their communications. Effectively communicating with every employee is a daily job responsibility on the leader's side. Without having effective communication with employee's can have negative results and unhappy employees.

The second part of this writer's philosophy has to do with helping employee's understand what the organizations value and goals are. Without understanding what the organization expects from every employee and what they want to see as to the success of their business, employee's are clueless and won't know what the organization expects from them as an employee of their organization. This is a crucial part of this writer's philosophy because it could give the employee's a sense of not caring about how they perform as long as they are receiving a paycheck every week.

Knowledge of the employee and the diversity of each employee's is another part of this writer's philosophy. It is very important for leaders to know each of their employee's strengths and weaknesses as well as the diversity within the leader's team. This part of the philosophy allows the leader to understand the team's best practices and opportunities. It allows the leader to know which employee's are knowledgeable in different areas of each performance metric and could assist other team members that struggle in those areas. Without knowing this information, the leader will not be able to get the employee's to work as a team and provide the team members with the knowledge they need to be successful as a team (Gerhardt, 2009).

Last but not least, as a leader it is important to be able to assist the employee's in areas they are having problems with in meeting specific performance metrics. The more knowledgeable the leader is the more successful the employee's are going to be. This part of this writer's philosophy is a critical component because without having the knowledge of the organization and the policies and procedures that the organization