Describe ethics and its relationship with effective leadership communication, importance of emotional intelligence, and importance of mindfulness (rice. Du). Communication is the transmission of meaning from one person to another or many people. It is comprised of a sender and a receiver consisting of context and messages. Usually if there is a communication problem it would be from a variable of issues. One would be the context of how the message was sent, the kind of words sent, noise surrounding it, or the tone of the speaker sending the message.
Leadership communication is the controlled purposeful transfer f meaning by which leaders influence a single person, group, organization, or community. The higher you move up in an organization the more complex your communication skills become. To be an effective communicator as a leader you need to be able to listen, interpret, and make decisions. If possible you should adapt the open door policy where staff can come into your office at any time for any reason, whether personal or job related. You have to in some sense become a counselor so to speak.
Make sure that you understand what is being presented to you and have the confidence to be able to fix the problem or if not able to fix t you can reassure your employee that the problem will be taken care of. Being in the Mental Health field, communication has to be important and should be the number one factor in dealing with clients, staff, and other managers. Time after time the communication between managers and staff is never there. This is where the positive image and its relationship of effective leadership come into play.
If your manager does not display a positive image and is always negative, communication is already broken. If the manager is being forceful and disrespectful in their approach to any conversation, staff will already be on the offensive and will receive the information in a negative way, which in turn will cause a negative response from the staff member and cause a conflict between manager and staff. This type of problem occurs often in my line of work. It is usually because there are a lot of managers who at some point was regular staff.
They bided into a manager position, and once they became a manager their ego got big and they decided that what they said goes without any argument. A lot of times they were wrong about their approach to certain situation concerning the clients and their behavior. It would be surprising do to the fact that they may have once worked with the client and knew what the client’s behaviors were but chose to ignore that now that they were managers and wanted to implement their own assessment of the client and what they thought the course of action should be.
The positive image of the manager was no longer present. As for the effective leadership skills in communicating with staff, there was none. There was no respect from the staff towards the manager at this point. Barriers were starting to form, and when you have a leader who does not recognize that there s a problem then you have a manager who has no leadership skills. They are not able to guide, direct, motivate, or even inspire an employee to want to act on a command. Having a positive image is vital for whoever is trying to show leadership qualities.
According to the Handbook of Business Strategy, the image that the leader should display should be one of confidence, knowledge, are they believable, and is the person trustworthy. Ethics is a major problem within the mental health field. I had a manager that was very knowledgeable about the job. His Leadership qualities were outstanding. He could communicate well with the staff and with the clients when it came to serious matters. He had your back in any situation. The only thing he lacked was ethical skills. That was what brought tension with him and staff. In this field people take their job lightly.
They would come to work fifteen minutes to thirty minutes late, having the earlier staff have to stay later than they wanted. What the manager would do instead of keeping the late staffs time where they came in late, he would set it back to the time that they should have come in and take the extra time from the staff that stayed later. Also he would commit financial fraud in that he was suppose to every Friday bring weekly spending to the clients in a certain amount ($25. 00). He was supposed to bring funds to the site, give the funds to the staff, then have the staff count it.
Then he was to have the client sign the verification form stating that they received a certain amount. He would come in tell the clients to let him see their wallets and he would put money in it without the staff seeing or verifying the amount. Once he would leave the clients would come to staff and say that they signed for amount that they did not receive. The manager was eventually reprimanded for the action and given the choice to either be demoted to a regular staff or be terminated. He chose to be demoted. Because of his leadership skills the agency was willing to look pass his bad ethical decisions.
People can always display a positive image and seem honest and trustworthy, yet have little or no ethics. Researchers James Souses and Barry Poster found in their research on leadership, “if people are going to follow someone willingly, whether it be into battle or into the boardroom, they must first want to assure themselves that the person is worthy of their trust. They would like to know if he would-be leader is truthful and ethical” (1993). The importance of Emotional Intelligence in leadership communication is based on how well you can understand you audience in communication situations.
The definition suggests that emotional intelligence begins with the ability to identify and manage emotions in ourselves and in others. Without emotional intelligence, leaders cannot communicate with and manage others effectively (Rice. Du). Emotional intelligence is emotional and social knowledge and the ability to be aware of, understand, and express yourself, relate to others, deal with strong emotions ND control your impulses, adapt to change, to solve problems of a personal or social nature (Reuben Bar-On 1988).
You have to be able to understand what moves that person or persons to be able to listen and what would be the motivation for them to act in a situation. Having the knowledge of your position when communicating to your staff it conveys confidence and ultimately have staff believe in you. The confidence will be there where any messages that are being relayed are being received without barriers. It is like the staff is being persuaded to act on anything that is communicated to them by the anger, because of their confidence in their manager.
The confidence in our manager was high because we knew that his knowledge of the position was good so we had his back as well as he having ours. Mindful communication is also a key part of being able to manage a group or groups of people. There are different attitudes that you must carry when approaching a situation or just communicating with others. You must be non-judgmental and not put labels on others. Do not take things personal, try not to categorize or label the other person you are talking to. Try not to play the blame game. Instead, observe other’s behavior without labeling or categorizing them.
Patience versus frustration is another attitude that must be practiced. Try not to say something to make someone do something faster or different in a harsh tone. Before you want to speak to someone, stop and take a breath while recognizing others needs and feelings. Never focus on past negative communication to the point where you have to reject or ignore communication from others. You just focus on every new moment and experience as it comes and excepting communication from another person. Never try to change others by threatening them, correcting hem all the time, or feeling like you have to always advise them.
If you can notice your own needs and faults and be able to express those needs and apply them accordingly you will be on your way to having a meaning managerial career. Leadership communication is key to the mental health field in that ethics plays a big part of being able to have an ethical approach to your job and not be to judgmental in your decision making without realizing the consequences in the end. Know your clients behavior and what makes them act certain ways. Understand all administrative duties as well as being able to have meaningful tenting and trainings with knowledge that can be passed on to your staff.
As manager in the mental health field you need to be able to display a positive image also. If you are always showing a negative attitude, and speak in a disrespectful tone, you will lose the respect of your staff and your clients that are high functioning and eventually your position. Since being in the mental health field for the last ten years I have seen leaders come and go. It has not been because of moving on to bigger and better jobs but do to the lack of leadership skills they possessed. My agency has a problem with promoting and hiring young ND old staff from other agencies who were managers at their other agency.
Even though the concept of managing staff and clients are the same along with rules and regulations, the agency is different, and way things were run at your old job might not work in your new job. As a manager you need to be able to adapt to a new situation. My experience with managers who come from other agencies feel that they do not need to have any input from their new staff and that what they say goes. In this line of work, if you cannot work well with your staff and have a good working relationship with them. Your job will become very difficult. Staff will start to not do favors for you or cover for your mistakes.
Staff will start to make phone calls to the office for things that you are not doing when it comes to manager responsibilities. There have also been times when managers come in with no people person skills at all. You often wonder what the hiring process his like when these people are being interviewed. What questions are being asked in the interview process? You would wander why you left your position as a manager from your last job. Sometimes you may get someone who always ant to use their past experiences with others will be the same with your new staff.
When coming into a new job from another place as a leader, you should focus on the new moment and new move along with new experiences. Take the time to reassess your life and focus on the challenge ahead. Be able to understand and notice your met and unmet needs. Express those needs along with your feelings connected to those needs. Always understand that whatever position you may have, there is always room to continue to learn and improve your leadership skills. Take the initiative to get into a lot of training courses that involves leadership. Do not allow pride to have you not be able to ask questions when you are not clear about something.
Don’t feel that you need to always take the initiative to do something on your own, based on past experience, what happened back then may not give the same outcome. Allow room to fail and understand that the failure means improvement, because you recognize what brought about that failure and you are prepared to fix the problem. Confidence is vital to being a good manager in that if you display the confidence in your work that tends to trickle down to your staff and make it easier for you to do org that is outside of what is asked of your staff because they will be able to do whatever task is given to them without someone being over your back.
Accept communication from others and be able to advice, and correct problems without feeling you have to use threats. A proposed course of action for my organization is more training for leaders in charismatic leadership, human- oriented leadership, task-oriented leadership, and leadership outcomes (Journal of Business ; Psychology, 2010). Also the interview process should be more goals oriented as far as the manager is concerned. They should be required o write a paper on what they think a leader means and what goals should a leader be trying to set along with their staff that they will be supervising.
They would have to be put in certain situations and show how they would handle that situation and be able to give detailed steps on how they would handle a crisis problem. Your charisma will be examined. How enthused and outgoing you are in your work, are you considerate as a leader to others, and are you good at delegating or initiating structure within your team. You must show interpersonal skills to be able to communicate on the level that is needed to become a successful leader. You must be able to engage in social interactions, and have verbal and nonverbal communication skills.
Leaders are just that, someone who can lead without having to be questioned about their decision making skills, delegating jobs skills, and responsibility. If you have those traits you will get the rewards of being a good leader just from seeing how your staff performs and the way your clients look, fill, and carry themselves in the houses or out in public. The greatest challenge of being a leader is being able to delegate or release managerial duties or task to others and feel confident that the job will et done.
This is where surrounding yourself with excellent people comes into play, because if you do not have good people around you, whatever system you are trying to run will fall apart and collapse due to you not being able to delegate task. And not being able to delegate will cause you as the leader to lose focus because you are focusing on your staff. Always make sure that you are committed to life-long learning if you are looking to be the best at your job. The goal is to ultimately be the top leader. If that cannot happen you will know that all you did was a success within your career.