MMHA 6111 Week 1 Leadership Practices Baseline Post Example

Week 1 Discussion: Initial Post and Replies

Five Practices, Ranked by What My Team Would Actually See

Ranked from most to least visible in the work of the composite outpatient imaging manager I am writing about, Kouzes and Posner's five practices fall in this order: enable others to act, model the way, challenge the process, inspire a shared vision and, last by some distance, encourage the heart (Kouzes & Posner, 2017). The ranking rests on the assigned chapter and on episodes from the past year, not on a formal instrument; a structured self-assessment comes later in the term and may change it.

Enabling others to act is the strongest because of how the manager handled a schedule dispute last spring. Two technologists at the satellite imaging center disagreed about weekend rotation, and each had a fair complaint. Instead of setting a rotation, the manager asked them to redesign it together within two limits, coverage on every shift and no one working more than two weekends in a row, and approved what they produced. The rotation has held for a year, and the two now cover for each other without being asked. That is the practice at work: giving people the authority and information to solve a problem that is theirs.

Encouraging the heart is the weakest, and one episode shows why. After a week in which the satellite team absorbed a scanner outage by rebooking forty patients and staying late twice, the manager sent a schedule update on Friday and said nothing else. The team noticed. Recognition is not something the manager avoids on principle; it simply does not happen without a reason to remember it.

That weakness matters now because the satellite center is about to close, with its staff and one scanner moving into the hospital's imaging department when the lease ends. A consolidation asks people to give up a place they chose and routines they built. Bridges and Bridges argue that every change begins with an ending, and that people need their losses acknowledged before they can commit to what comes next (Bridges & Bridges, 2016). A review of six decades of research on how employees respond to change likewise found that how recipients are treated during a change, including whether they feel supported and informed, shapes their reactions to it (Oreg et al., 2011). Recognizing what they have contributed, and what they are being asked to give up, is the practice the move will strain first, and it is the one this manager is least practiced in. The plan for the consolidation will need to build recognition in deliberately rather than leave it to memory.

Reply to Natalie

Natalie, you describe your manager as visionary and collaborative. Could you give one episode that shows each? I ask because the five practices are about behavior, and an example would let us see whether the vision is something the team shares or something the manager talks about. If there is a meeting where staff shaped the plan, that would be strong evidence of both.

Reply to Andre

Andre, you rank challenging the process as your strongest practice and say your unit is about to adopt a new electronic record. I wonder whether the change will test a different practice first. Staff learning a new system often need encouragement more than challenge, at least in the first months. Which practice do you think your team will need most from you in the first thirty days?

References

Bridges, W., & Bridges, S. (2016). Managing transitions: Making the most of change (4th ed.). Da Capo Lifelong Books.

Kouzes, J. M., & Posner, B. Z. (2017). The leadership challenge: How to make extraordinary things happen in organizations (6th ed.). Wiley.

Oreg, S., Vakola, M., & Armenakis, A. (2011). Change recipients' reactions to organizational change: A 60-year review of quantitative studies. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 47(4), 461-524. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021886310396550