Application: Taking a Stand

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Effective leaders have a high degree of self-awareness and know how to leverage their strengths in the workplace. Assessments are a valuable tool that professionals can use to learn more about themselves and consider how their temperament and preferences influence their interactions with others.

As you engage in this learning process, it is important to remember that everyone—regardless of temperament type or related preferences—experiences some challenges with regard to leadership. The key to success is being able to recognize and leverage your own strengths while honoring differences among your colleagues.

At some point in your leadership career, you will encounter an ethical or moral dilemma that requires you to take a stand and defend your position.

For this Assignment, you evaluate an issue and consider how you could act as a moral agent or advocate, facilitating the resolution of the issue for a positive outcome.

To prepare:

·        Consider the examples of leadership demonstrated in this week’s media presentation and the other Learning Resources.

·        To further your self-knowledge, you are required to complete the Kiersey Temperament as indicated in this week’s Learning Resources. Consider your leadership style, including your strengths for leading others and include your results from Kiersey Temperament Sorter to describe potential challenges related to your leadership style.

·        Mentally survey your work environment, or one with which you are familiar, and identify a timely issue/dilemma that requires you to perform the leadership role of moral agent or advocate to improve a situation (e.g., speaking or acting on behalf of a vulnerable patient, the need for appropriate staffing, a colleague being treated unfairly).

·        What ethical, moral, or legal skills, dispositions, and/or strategies would help you resolve this dilemma? Define the differences between ethical, moral, and legal leadership.

·        Finally, consider the values and principles that guide the nursing profession; the organization’s mission, vision, and values; the leadership and management competencies addressed in this course; and your own values and reasons for entering the profession. What motivation do you see for taking a stand on an important issue even when it is difficult to do so?

To complete:

Write a 4 to 5 page paper (page count does not include title and reference page) that addresses the following:

·        Introduce the conceptual frameworks of the ethical constructs of ethics, moral, or legal standards and the purpose of the paper.

·        Consider  an ethical, moral, or legal dilemma that you have encountered in your work environment and describe it.

·        Analyze the moral, ethical, and legal implications utilized in this situation. Describe your role as a moral agent or advocate for this specific issue.

·        Consider your leadership styles identified by your self-assessment and determine if they act as a barrier or facilitation during this dilemma.

Self Assessment results

Guardians (SJ’s) are the cornerstone of society, for they are the temperament given to serving and preserving our most important social institutions. Guardians have natural talent in managing goods and services–from supervision to maintenance and supply — and they use all their skills to keep things running smoothly in their families, communities, schools, churches, hospitals, and businesses.

Guardians can have a lot of fun with their friends, but they are quite serious about their duties and responsibilities. Guardians take pride in being dependable and trustworthy; if there’s a job to be done, they can be counted on to put their shoulder to the wheel. Guardians also believe in law and order, and sometimes worry that respect for authority, even a fundamental sense of right and wrong, is being lost. Perhaps this is why Guardians honor customs and traditions so strongly — they are familiar patterns that help bring stability to our modern, fast-paced world.

Practical and down-to-earth, Guardians believe in following the rules and cooperating with others. They are not very comfortable winging it or blazing new trails; working steadily within the system is the Guardian way, for in the long run loyalty, discipline, and teamwork get the job done right. Guardians are meticulous about schedules and have a sharp eye for proper procedures. They are cautious about change, even though they know that change can be healthy for an institution. Better to go slowly, they say, and look before you leap.

Guardians make up as much as 40 to 45 percent of the population, and a good thing, because they usually end up doing all the indispensable but thankless jobs everyone else takes for granted.