In your readings this week, focus on the discussion of leadership in health care as a relational act that really is acting on our sense of identity, self-esteem, and abilities. Considering these characteristics of yourself, how can you, as a leader, use these traits to improve and engage in communications within your interprofessional teams?

Using Personal Identity for Effective Healthcare Leadership

Developing a sense of identity is beneficial to leaders in the healthcare setting. A sense of identity enables individuals to introspect and identify their personality traits, strengths, weaknesses, values, morals, and motivators (Germain & Knight, 2021). As such, individuals with a strong sense of identity are likely to develop positive self-esteem and have productive engagement with others. My introspection reveals that I embrace conscientiousness, empathy, Openness, accountability, and extraversion.

As a leader, I can use my personality traits and abilities to achieve positive engagements with interdisciplinary team members. Conscientiousness will enable me to plan adequately, adopt and reinforce positive behaviors among team members, and identify potential pitfalls (Hughes et al., 2020). Planning will promote engagement by ensuring that every member performs a unique role. Secondly, Openness and empathy will enable me to establish rapport with team members and communicate goals to avert role ambiguity (Hughes et al., 2020). Extraversion will enable me to establish positive social relations with team members (Hughes et al., 2020). Positive social relations are enablers of open communication and collaboration.

References

Germain, C., & Knight, C. (2021). The life model of social work practice. In The Life Model of Social Work Practice (4th ed.). Columbia University Press. https://doi.org/10.7312/gitt18748

Hughes, D. J., Kratsiotis, I. K., Niven, K., & Holman, D. (2020). Personality traits and emotion regulation: A