Since I had a completely different idea of what leadership is, it was difficult for me to see the ways that I am a leader. I think that the leadership content in this course would have been more helpful for me had it included more definitions of the concept of leadership itself, what leadership means to different people, and specific ways that we can lead as social workers.
Through my previous posts, I hope that I have been able to demonstrate how important leadership really is in social work practice. Before taking this course, I had never really thought of myself as a leader. The leadership concepts and principles that we learned throughout this semester have helped me recognize the ways that I can lead others. I am so glad that this information was provided during the first semester of the MSW program, because now I am able to see opportunities to lead and utilize my leadership skills throughout the remainder of my coursework and then continue to use this information in my career as a social worker.
This course has raised my awareness of everyday leadership and how we can be leaders without even knowing it. It is empowering to realize the impact that I can have on others, and that is important for other MSW students to know as well. We often think about the ways that other people affect us, which is important, but as social workers we should also consider the ways that our actions affect others. That is part of being a good leader.
The Goleman article describes the five components of emotional intelligence: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skill. You can be smart and have technical skills, but if you do not have emotional intelligence, you will not make a great leader.
Being self-aware means knowing yourself and your emotions, strengths/limitations, needs, motivations, values, and goals. Someone with a lot of self-awareness is not overly critical or idealistic. If you are self-aware, then you are able to understand where you are on the mood elevator and how that might influence yourself, your interactions with others, and your ability to work. With self-awareness comes a desire for constructive criticism, because self-aware people are comfortable discussing their limitations. Someone with not a lot of self-awareness views criticism, even constructive criticism, as an indication that he/she is failing. Finally, people with self-awareness are confident in themselves and their strengths. They know when they need help and are not afraid to ask for it.
The emotional intelligence component that is the most challenging for me is self-awareness. Reading through the description of self-awareness, the word that sticks out to me is “self-confidence.” I have struggled with self-esteem issues since middle school, and that is why it is difficult for me to develop self-awareness. Basically every aspect of self-awareness in the overview is the opposite of how I am. I am overly critical of myself, which is part of my low self-esteem. I already mentioned in a previous post that discovering where I am on the mood elevator is a concept that resonated with me because I often let my emotions get the best of me. I don’t take constructive criticism well.
The first and most obvious step that I would have to take in order to become more self-aware is to gain self-confidence. I have been working on this for a long time, but I can continue to try to boost my self-esteem through focusing on my own strengths and performing self-care activities. Another way that I can increase my self-awareness is by monitoring myself regularly to figure out where I am on the Mood Elevator and how that affects me both internally and externally.
Two of the leadership concepts that we have learned about this semester are Ethical Leadership and Assuming Positive Intent/Mood Elevator.
Part of being ethical leaders coincides with something that I talked about in my last post, which was being ethical social workers while working with people from other professions. In our coursework regarding ethical leadership, we read this quote from Ruth Lipschutz:
“As social workers, ethical leadership is fundamentally about having the insight and courage to live out our values when there is pressure to compromise or rationalize them away. It is in situations where we are faced with ethical dilemmas—competing duties that require rank ordering of value—that ethical leadership is most needed.”
In order to make ethical decisions, we must be able to recognize ethical dilemmas when they exist. As social work practitioners using ethical leadership, we must remember that ethical decision-making is a process and that it won’t always be easy. Resolving a problem can only be as easy as the problem itself, and in social work, we see our fair share of complicated ethical dilemmas. As in every area of social work practice, we must exercise cultural humility when considering ethical decision-making.
I have already utilized ethical leadership/decision-making in my education at Ohio State, and I can easily imagine myself integrating this concept into my practice in the future. Everyday, social work practice involves ethics. We must always be aware of the Code of Ethics and how it impacts our interactions with all clients. In my undergraduate field placement, I was required to use an ethical-decision making model (I used the Reamer model: https://csw.osu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/reamermodel1.pdf ) to resolve ethical dilemmas as one of my activities on my learning agreement. I will use the concept of ethical leadership to guide my practice in the field of social work and stay true to the Code of Ethics. Models such as the Reamer Model will help me make these ethical decisions.
Assuming positive intent and being aware of where I am on the mood elevator is the leadership concept from this semester that resonated with me the most because I have the tendency to let my emotions rule my life. Without even realizing it, I allow my feelings to have an impact on every other aspect of my life. It is important that I learn to monitor my emotions and regularly check where I am on the mood elevator. If I determine that I am low on the elevator, I need to try to change my viewpoint, gain other perspectives, and alter my thought patterns. A way to ensure that I remain high on the mood elevator is to consistently practice self-care.
We need to be able to see the best in people in order to be effective social workers. For this reason, I like to think of assuming positive intent as operating from a strengths-based perspective. The strengths-based perspective is essentially focusing on people’s strengths rather than their weaknesses. This relates to assuming positive intent and the mood elevator, because they are both about concentrating on the positives. I have already started practicing checking in with where I am on the mood elevator before interacting with others, and I will continue to do so throughout the MSW program and my career.
Before I started in the social work program, I always thought that being a leader was about supervising, but I have since come to realize that anyone can be a leader. In social work, it is important for us to be effective leaders. Like I said in my last post, we impact people daily– sometimes without even knowing it. Example:
Choosing social work as a profession requires us to have leadership skills, whether we recognize them or not.
From the beginning of our training as social workers, we are taught fundamental aspects of leadership such as:
Leadership skills can help social workers at both the micro and macro levels of practice. Micro-level practitioners use these skills to work with individual clients/groups, to help them see their potential, and to empower them toward change. At the macro level, we use leadership skills to fight for social justice through impacting policy and advocating for others. Social workers at all levels of practice are focused one thing: making the world a better place for everyone. Being an effective leader in social work is important, because leadership is who we are. The ability to lead and to help others is what the profession is all about.
Social workers regularly work with people from other disciplines. Leadership in the social work profession might look different from what other professions think leadership is. This can have both positive and negative effects on how other disciplines view the social work profession. The skills that we have as social work leaders that will most likely be viewed positively by people in other professions include: helping others, listening, collaborating, and resolving conflicts. Utilizing these skills will make teamwork go so much more smoothly. On the other hand, our ethical framework looks completely different from other professions’. As social work leaders, we must always practice with our Code of Ethics (https://www.socialworkers.org/About/Ethics/Code-of-Ethics/Code-of-Ethics-English) in mind. People in practice areas such as teaching, nursing, law enforcement, etc. have different ideas of what ethical practice is. For example, a teacher may refer a student to a social worker for a problem that the student is dealing with that is impacting the teacher’s ability to work with that student. Since the teacher was the referral source, he or she may want to know what is being discussed in therapy sessions. However, one of our ethical standards is confidentiality, and as social work leaders we must utilize ethics in our practice. This may cause the teacher to view the social work profession negatively because he/she believes that the social worker should share the information.
Social workers have the ability to impact many people on a daily basis. That is why it is important for us to think of ourselves as leaders and always consider the implications of our actions. As a social work student and a future practitioner in the field of social work, to me, leadership means always doing the right thing. It means always understanding that our thoughts have the ability to greatly influence our behavior; that is why it is important to be aware of our state of mind in every situation. It also means that we must do what is most helpful for our clients and to be aware of the ethical considerations that affect our relationships with clients. I think that for many of us, when we hear the word “leader,” we automatically think of someone in power. However, being a leader is about so much more than being “in charge.” It is about making positive changes, empowering others, and being a good role model.