For several years I experienced one of the most rewarding jobs I ever had which working in the healthcare industry in a hospital with an adjoining extended care facility. This was my first job straight out of college so I was full of excitement to start but I didn’t realize how difficult of a job I was taking on. I was employed as a Dietetic Technician so my educational background was on diets that you need to stay healthy; my education did not prepare me for the daily emotional challenges I would face by working with severely ill patients and to cope with the patients that we lost.
After reading about Northouse’s (2013) view of servant leadership the memories came back and I realized what a strong role model we had with our medical director who showed many characteristics of being a servant leader. I now realize that if it wasn’t for the leadership, guidance, and mentoring he gave me I would not have been able to stay in the job for very long. Northouse (2013) states that servant leaders need to be there to nurture, empathize, empower, and address the needs of their followers. By providing the entire healthcare facility with this kind of leadership he created a strong knit group who supported each other and in turn provided outstanding healthcare to its patients.
One of the ways the medical director empowered us is he asked for every employee who had contact with a patient for their opinion in healthcare decisions, and we had weekly meetings to discuss their care with the patient and their family members. He believed in the team approach for quality in care and listened to our opinion and recommendations and those of his patients. When it came to dietary restrictions with the elderly he empathized with his patient and also listened to my recommendation. He often as Northouse (2013) put it, took a moment to “Stand in someone else’s shoes” and thought how he would feel in that situation.
In being a healthcare provider he also looked after the wellbeing of all of his staff. If someone had a personal issue he was always there to support the person, even if he had to drive hours to someone’s home on his own time to make sure they were okay. For me he provided emotional support on how to handle losing the patients you become close to who felt like an extension of your own family.
In the healthcare industry there are always new findings and discoveries on how to better treat illnesses and care for patients. Our medical director had the trait Northouse (2013) describes as foresight. Foresight is the ability to look into the future and make changes based on what has happened in the past (Northouse, 2013, 222). The medical field is very challenging and everyone has to take a look at every situation that may not have had the best outcome as an opportunity to learn, and to ask the question, where do we go from here? This is where our medical director shined; he presented us with problems and challenges and encouraged us to help with the solution. This helped everyone grow in confidence, to learn from their experiences, and be open to change.
In closing the trait I recognized the most was building community. The medical director truly brought into a small community a sense of belonging. The entire healthcare team felt united in a joint effort by providing the best quality healthcare we could, and you had a sense you were part of a family by doing it. With the long hours in health care that most employees work you need that support to energize you to get through the long and emotionally challenging days.
Reference
Northouse, P. G. (2013). Leadership: Theory and Practice (Sixth edition). Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications.
Stephanie,
I enjoyed your post about the servant leadership while in your first job as a Dietetic Technician. I find it important to really find leadership in other areas and careers than just business. Therefore, reading your post was a refreshing change from the redundant information and anecdotes of office work. Although all information about leadership is important, whether it is office work or in another job, this enlightened me.
Like you said, a servant leader places the followers first even over their own interests and goals (Northouse, 2013, p. 220). You seemed to have an excellent mentor who was able to really enable a sense of community out of the team and place the team’s interests at hand first. Because of this great leadership, outstanding outcomes can come for the team. There are numerous outcomes that happen because of servant leadership such as follower performance and growth, organizational performance, and societal impact (Northouse, 2013, p. 230). Though your director was putting the team first, he seemed to also manage to create a cohesive and productive environment because the team was able to have confidence that they could all work well together. This in return enables a team to excel and create results.
It is great to know that you can count on your boss and team. Luckily this helped create a valuable and rewarding experience. Another thought to look into now is whether the director was able to express another theory in his work. He might have been using the interpersonal part of authentic leadership. As an interpersonal process, it describes authentic leadership as relational, created by leaders and followers together (Northouse, 2013, p. 254). Creating a team enabled everyone to communicate very well and in the end it might have been a group effort too.
References:
Northouse, P. G. (2013). Leadership: Theory and Practice (6th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.
I find it very interesting how much new learning can broaden the perspective we have on past events. Specifically, throughout this course I have come to appreciate some of the styles and decisions of previous leaders I have come across. I gathered from your post that you have had some of the same revelations. When you discussed the servant leadership traits possessed by the medical director at your previous workplace, it was clear that you had gained a deeper appreciation of his contributions to your mental well-being and development having studied servant leadership.
I believe that you gave excellent examples to connect your medical director with many of the characteristics that Spears (2002) identified as being central to the concept of servant leadership: listening, empathy, healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, commitment to the growth of people, and building community (Northouse, 2012). The way that he was able to identify the individual needs of the members of your team through effective communication and empathy, and then provide solutions to the group, demonstrates his commitment to serve. The culture of community and support that your medical director was able to create from the service to your team further highlights his skill in servant leadership. It is no wonder that he was able to make a stressful, emotionally demanding job more manageable. This was a great leadership model to present.
Thank you!
James Leuthe
Reference:
Northouse, P. G. (2012). Leadership: Theory and Practice (6th ed.). Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, Inc.