MHA6100 WEEK 4 DISCUSSION AND PROJECT INSTRUCTIONS

MHA6100 WEEK 4 LECTURE

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Stimulating Creativity and Cultivating Adaptability

There are two parts to stimulating creativity, the creativity and the stimulation of creativity. Creativity is the use of innovative approaches to make decisions and solve problems. Stimulating that creativity calls for fostering a climate that is conducive for using creative approaches.

Stimulating creativity calls for leaders to see outside of the typical while also providing an environment where others can do the same. Leaders who are viewed as exceptional understand that reaching high levels of performance calls for creative thinking, which is a critical skill for them.

Stimulating creativity involves:

· Having a positive attitude toward challenges—Challenges provide opportunities

· Fostering respect—The leader looks for different points of view with staff

· Drawing out creative ideas—Facilitating brainstorming

· Building up to creative solutions—The ability of the leader to synthesize peoples’ ideas into the whole

How to Create a Creativity-Stimulating Environment

A few pointers on how to provide a creativity-stimulating environment:

· Respect what your staff members do and encourage their creativity by showing genuine interest.

· Lead by example and embrace challenges. The only way you become better at what you do is by accepting challenges. When a leader embraces challenges with a positive attitude, the staff, if there is a good relationship, will follow.

· Seek creative ideas from staff by facilitating brainstorming sessions.

· Interact with your staff. This is the key to building relationships, establishing trust, and fostering an open environment. This is important in allowing the staff to feel free to offer creative ideas without the fear of ridicule.

Cultivating Adaptability

Cultivating adaptability is quickly seeing the essence of issues and effectively producing clarity to situations of ambiguity. It is done by using a variety of leadership styles and techniques along with interpreting implications, maintaining focus during multiple tasks while also working effectively with a broad range of individuals. Cultivating adaptability in leadership calls for the following fundamental skills:

· Reading the environment—Success calls for understanding situations, people, relationships, history, and outcomes

· Assessing the ideal course of action among a number of choices

· Responding with an appropriate leadership style—Understanding when and how to use certain leadership styles and perfecting those styles

Additional Materials

From your course textbook, Exceptional Leadership: 16 Critical Competencies for Healthcare Executives, read the following chapters:

· Competency 15: Stimulating Creativity

· Competency 16: Cultivating Adaptability

From the South University Online Library, read the following articles:

· The Role of Stimulating Employees' Creativity and Idea Generation in Encouraging Innovation Behaviour in Irish Firms 

· Leading into the Next Frontier 

Systems Approaches to Leadership Development

Leaders should and must be responsible for their own development and learning. However, organizations need to take leadership development seriously. Organizations need to think beyond the developmental needs of individual leaders and toward the leadership needs of the entire organization.

Healthcare organizations with high-performance leadership development systems have specific components in common. The first component is strategic alignment. For a leadership development system to accomplish its full potential, it must align with the organization’s strategic goals. This also means that senior leadership should be an active participant in this.

The second component is attracting and selecting leaders. Leadership potential is critical for successful leadership development systems. This makes it of the utmost importance for the organization to attract high-potential leaders to work for the organization. The strongest leadership development systems tend to be associated with organizations that invest effort to develop a manner of communicating how the organization approaches leadership.

The third component is preparing new leaders for success. The more thoughtful and systematic the approach to onboarding is, the more successful the newly hired leaders tend to be. Identifying and developing high potentials is the next component. Preparation for leadership takes time and experience. This is especially true for senior leadership roles. A strategically aligned leadership development approach allows organizations to identify the leadership capacity needs over time and prepare future leaders. The provision of developmental, experienced-based activities are vital to successful leadership development programs. The last three components are just as vital as the first five. Providing performance feedback, planning succession, and monitoring results have been proven to be essential. Leaders who receive high-quality feedback on an ongoing basis are more successful than their counterparts.

Additional Materials

From your course textbook, Exceptional Leadership: 16 Critical Competencies for Healthcare Executives, read the following chapter:

· Systems Approaches To Leadership Development

From the South University Online Library, read the following article:

· A Framework for Leading the Transformation to Performance Excellence Part I: CEO Perspectives on Forces, Facilitators, and Strategic Leadership Systems 

Leadership Coaches and Coaching Programs

Leadership coaching is a formal engagement where a qualified coach works with an organizational leader in a series of sessions designed to establish and achieve clear goals that will result in improved effectiveness of the individual and the organization. Having a leadership coach can be helpful specifically in the following situations:

· To prepare for a position that requires substantively different leadership skills than you currently possess

· To take a new position within your organization

· To transition to a new organization

· To improve your performance when someone has expressed concern about a deficit in your leadership skills that may be negatively affecting your performance

Leadership Coaching Approaches

Situation	Challenge	Solution
To prepare for a position that requires substantively different leadership skills than you currently possess	Identifying the specific skills needed and the skills currently possessed	The coach will assess your current cache of leadership skills and design a crosswalk between current and needed skills. Once this is established, the skills that are still needed for development are identified. Along with your coach, strategies will be developed.
To take a new position within your organization	Understanding the interworking of the organization such as politics and relationships already established	The coach will work through this process in three steps: 1. Introduce the interworking of the organization to the mentee. 2. Introduce the mentee to the players in the organization that are important to the mentee’s desired development. 3. The coach will use role-play into the relationship building process.
To transition to a new organization	Understanding the expectations and dynamics of the new organization	For this area, the coach must pull from both his experiences and the experiences of the mentee. Looking back at different transitions provides both insight and education on how to proceed in a new organization.
To improve your performance when someone has expressed concern about a deficit in your leadership skills that may be negatively affecting your performance	Approaching the deficit openly and honestly, which includes receiving feedback from your coach and others who know your work	As a coach, the number one teaching point in this situation is to assure the mentee that the remarks and comments are not personal. These reviews are strictly based on the skills that have been shown to those evaluating your skills.

Each of the previous situations involves a distinct leadership challenge. These different challenges require different approaches, depending on the organizational context and the competencies and blind spots you bring to them. A coach can assist you in prioritizing your development work, identifying specific goals, and keeping you focused on these goals.

You need to have specific development goals in mind, and then you need to determine the competencies you should to master to achieve these goals. Performance evaluations, 360-degree evaluation programs, or other developmental programs are good for identifying the areas of improvements.

Coaching is most useful when coupled with other developmental options. However, coaching can also be great for developing competencies when other developmental options are not readily available. Remember, the more opportunities you have to practice a given competency on the job, the more effective coaching is in helping you develop your skills rapidly.

Additional Materials

From your course textbook, Exceptional Leadership: 16 Critical Competencies for Healthcare Executives, read the following chapter:

· Leadership Coaches And Coaching Programs

From the South University Online Library, read the following articles:

· Developing a Healthcare Leadership Coaching Model Using Action Research and Systems Approaches—a Case Study: Implementing an Executive Coaching Programme to Support Nurse Managers in Achieving Organisational Objectives in Malta 

· Evaluating Coaching’s Effect: Competencies, Career Mobility and Retention