MHA@GW Module 1

 Healthcare Management and Strategy

Module 1 Key Competencies 

Leadership: leading and managing others, planning and implementing change

Communication and Relationship Management: interpersonal communication, writing skills, working in teams

Business Skills and Knowledge: human resources management, strategic planning, marketing, organizational behavior and governance, planning and managing projects, quantitative analysis

Professionalism: improving community health

Health Care Knowledge: health care personnel, health care issues and trends

Module 1 Management and Strategy Reflection

            This module’s activities have influenced my management and leadership practices in the following way: set the example, achieve small wins, and recognize the contributions made by individuals. Of course, Kouzes and Posner’s The Leadership Challenge is the source of this inspiration that has impacted my management and leadership in this first module!

            By setting an example of aligning actions with shared values, leaders demonstrate a commitment to “practice what I preach”. This display of authenticity and transparency encourages the other members of the organization to mirror the behavior that is being modeled by the organization’s leadership.

            Prior to this module, I really did not appreciate the importance of achieving small wins. In fact, I misunderstood the small wins to essentially mean avoiding the significant work that needed the most attention! However, I now see that it is important to assist the team toward the successful completion of the Big Hairy Audacious Goal by breaking the over-all goal into smaller achievable segments. The team members achieve a sense of momentum as the smaller goals are incrementally finished along the team’s journey to completion of the overall goal.

            Members of the team can be encouraged during that journey by publicly acknowledging the specific contribution that a team member makes to achieving the small successes. People enjoy hearing that they have done work well. Recognizing the contributions that individuals have made throughout the incremental steps toward the final success of the project creates a climate for team members to embrace the values to which an organization is aspiring too. Waiting until the completion of a project to extend acknowledgement and appreciation to individuals is to pass over public opportunities to dispense encouragement to others during regular routines such as staff meetings.

            Community allows individual members of the team to come together to share in the experience of completing work well. Setting the example, achieving small wins, and recognizing the contributions made by individuals are some of the management and leadership skills that I have learned from Module I that creates a climate for that community to come together.