[Sharon]

Think of a situation where you have “followed” and by doing so showed leadership. Share your experience on the online discussion forum.

[Melanie]

I have “followed” in the “they build their strengths” quality. I definitely have a high standard of performance and I am always looking for new things to learn (courses, skills, lunch and learns etc) and ways to further develop my current skills and role. At one of my previous places of employment I reached out to my People Leader and the HR/Training team to discuss my career goals and if they had any extra courses I could join or participate in or any specific skills I should work on or develop further. My People Leader was thrilled that someone on her team wanted more! She went over a few extra responsibilities that I could take on within the scope of my role and asked if any interested me. All of them did, so I took them all on. It was a wonderful learning tool and it helped me develop some aspects of Leadership with my colleagues without having a Leadership title. With my current employer, this is something I have also recently discussed with my People Leader and she has expressed interest as well. I am hopeful with her guidance and support that I can continue to achieve the knowledge and skills required to help me obtain a People Leader role within my organization.

[Sandra]

I completely agree with you. Doing extra courses helps show your leader that you want to learn and improve your skills and abilities in the work place. I definitely believe it will help to move up in the work place or help get another job if the right opportunity comes along.

[Sandra]

I have followed by showing leadership on the unit I am on now. I noticed when I started that there was no team work no one helped each other in any tasks in the day. The previous job I had worked everyone helped each other between answering bells, helping with admissions daily tasks if help was needed there was lots of team work. So I started to ask the staff how come its not like this on this new unit one nurse said its never been like that ever nurse is for themselves I was shocked. We ended up talking to the Dr. who runs the program on that unit and she was goin to make changes as she noticed it as well. She asked us to write a list of the changed that needed to be made to make this unit successful and not be so exhausting for the staff. To me that has shown leadership towards and the staff are now happy to follow with these changes at work.

[Taraneh]

There is nothing worse than working on a unit that does not promote teamwork! I actually had a manager in my early days of nursing that disliked the idea of teams working outside of their “pods” which consisted of 1 nurse and 1 psw. It was frowned upon for the psw to ask the second psw for help and had to solely rely on the nurse for everything. Needless to say, that manager did not last long in that position.

[Andrea]

Wouldn’t it be great if health care could be proactive instead of reactive? To prevent the spread of disease instead of focusing on containment and treatment after it has occured? This has never been more evident than in recent history with COVID. The company I work for is a community nursing service, where nurses go house to house to see patients. We do not clearly fall under LTC or acute care groupings although we do see pts who belong in both settings. This caused a lot of confusion when COVID first became prominent in Ontario as we did not have clarity on which guidelines were to be used. With fear of the virus, many staff started to complain about unclear direction and the potential risk to themselves. Retirement homes were particularly frustrating for visiting nurses as they each told us different things we had to do before entering. Even now we have to screen as “visitors” at some and “contractors” at others. We even had a home that refused us entry until we removed our N95 masks and put on a surgical mask they were providing as this was their guideline. After discussion with other members of my team I approached our nurse manager with a plan to contact all retirement homes in the area to lay out our companies policy and how it would work with their policies so we could get back to focusing on the bigger picture, which was our patient’s care. I feel this is a good example of following by letting the manager, our leader, know about an issue and a good example of leading as I did not just sit and vent with the other team nurses but decided to manage myself and find a solution.

[Melanie]

Andrea, you make a great point! It would be great if health care could be proactive. I think as front line staff, we nurses deserve to have our voices heard. We are the ones spending the majority of our days with the patients and their families. Our own physical and mental health is just as important as anyone else’s. Our concerns and opinions should matter and should be a priority to our leaders and managers. Kudos to you for coming up with a plan and taking it to your manager for a solution!

[Suzanne]

I am definitely an effective follower. I take great pride in my work performance and am a mentor and go to person for many of co-workers. If there is an issue with now things are going at work I will approach my boss with suggestions as to how we can make things run more effectively. Recently we had added a new nursing line at work and I did approach my boss with an idea as to how the flow of scheduling appointments could be accessed more easily and my suggestion was implemented right away. Obviously this cannot be done all the time but I truly believe if you have a problem with something that you should bring forth a solution instead of just a complaint.

[Heather]

I make a strong effort to help out when needed even when I don’t have to. When I started my job about a year ago, there was a very toxic environment in my office. There was a lot of fighting and bullying. I did not want that to continue to be such a huge issue, so I started by trying to model better behaviour and looking for the positive qualities in others even when they were not easy to find. I am not sure this has been a total success but the environment is much better any d I know that I am not making it any worse by being straight forward with people and helping when needed.

[Maame]

Heather that was very nice of you to do that keep up the good work.

[Taraneh]

I think that I have been a leader while being a follower by showing my team members my confidence in our management team. When you believe in your leaders it’s easier to build the confidence of others to believe in them as well.

[Maame]

I have been follower and leader at the same time by abiding the rules and regualtions set in my facility, demonstrating leadership by collective speaking to my co-workes about any arising issues . When current issues couldn’t be solved as a unit, I took it upon myself to email the manager for a meeting so the issues can be resolved.

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