Leadership in Healthcare: Self-Awareness and Emotional Intelligence

This report provides a critical analysis of self-awareness and emotional intelligence in leadership, focusing on insights from Martin Bowles' presentation on 'A Leadership Journey' within a healthcare context. The analysis emphasizes the importance of emotional intelligence, which involves understanding and managing one's emotions and recognizing the emotions of others. It highlights self-awareness as a crucial element, enabling leaders to understand their strengths, weaknesses, and the impact of their actions. The report discusses how self-awareness and emotional intelligence contribute to ethical leadership, effective governance, and the ability to appreciate differences among team members. It also explores the significance of allowing team members to express their ideas and take risks. The report references Caldwell & Hayes (2016), Martin (2018), Rosenbach (2018), Spano-Szekely, Griffin, Clavelle & Fitzpatrick (2016), and Vasilagos, Polychroniou & Maroudas (2017) to support its arguments, providing a comprehensive understanding of the role of self-awareness and emotional intelligence in fostering successful and ethical leadership in healthcare environments.

Running head: SELF-AWARENESS & EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE IN LEADERSHIP 1
Self-Awareness and Emotional Intelligence in Leadership
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SELF-AWARENESS & EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE IN LEADERSHIP 2
SELF-AWARENESS & EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE IN LEADERSHIP
Emotional intelligence refers to the ability to fathom and manage one’s individual
emotions and acknowledge and influence the emotions of people around him. Individuals with
great extent of emotional intelligence know what they are feeling, what their emotions imply,
and how such emotions can influence other individuals. For leaders, emotional intelligence
remains necessary for success since they will be able to remain in control, and calmly assess
situation (Spano-Szekely, Griffin, Clavelle & Fitzpatrick, 2016).
Self-awareness is one of the five fundamental elements of emotional intelligence and the
more a leader self-awareness, the higher such a leader’s emotional intelligence is. A leader who
is self-aware will always know how he feels, and how his emotions and actions might affect
persons around him. Thus being self-aware when one is in leadership position implies having a
precise picture of your weakness and strengths and it implies behaving with humanity
(Vasilagos, Polychroniou & Maroudas, 2017).
According to Martin Bowles (2018) presentation, awareness of oneself or self-awareness
is extremely important in ensuring maximum contribution of a leader in organization. The
fundamental in leadership is self-awareness and emotional intelligence (Martine, 2018). This is
true because it dictates good governance whereby a leader will be able to understand the
governance side of things. Leaders must, therefore, know the people around them and trust them
for maximum contribution to be achieved in leadership position.
Martin (2018) holds that leaders must understand numbers to clearly understand the
system as this is the stepping stone towards success in leadership position. Such leaders will be
useful since they will be able to understand and appreciate the differences. By understanding the
differences, a leader will be able to appreciate the each person around him is difference. This

SELF-AWARENESS & EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE IN LEADERSHIP 3
helps such a leader to understand the skills of the team members, develop such skills and trust
the skills of his team members which leads to maximum contribution both individually and as a
team.
It is also true that emotional intelligence and self-awareness will help guide a leader not
to be afraid of letting team member who want to leave to go as this does not necessarily means a
negative outcome to the organization. People work best when they feel part of the organization
and cannot be forced to stay and still put their best input. Thus, only a leader who listens to what
is going on will be successful by allowing people to think differently, and try different things
without the fear of risks and failure (Martine, 2018).
A self-aware leader will use his emotional intelligence correctly and have courage to do
different things since he will be aware that every relationship has a risk attached. Thus, only
courage will allow such a leader to do what is right even if it involves risks (Rosenbach, 2018).
Based on the Martine’s presentation, it is clear that emotional intelligence and self-
awareness are the driving forces behind successful leadership. Thus, leaders must keep journal to
help them enhance their self-awareness by spending few minutes every day writing down the
thoughts to move a higher extent of self-awareness (humanity (Vasilagos, Polychroniou &
Maroudas, 2017)). Also, a leader needs to slow down when experiencing strong emotions or
anger, as this help examine the reason behind it and rationally chose how to react no matter the
situation (Caldwell & Hayes, 2016).

SELF-AWARENESS & EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE IN LEADERSHIP 4
References
Caldwell, C., & Hayes, L. A. (2016). Self-efficacy and self-awareness: moral insights to
increased leader effectiveness. Journal of Management Development, 35(9), 1163-1173.
Martin, B. (2018). A Leadership Journey. PSM FCPA.
https://www.cpaaustralia.com.au/employers/health-and-aged-care/healthcare-leaders-
forum
Rosenbach, W. E. (2018). Contemporary issues in leadership. Routledge, 12(1), 24-45.
Spano-Szekely, L., Griffin, M. T. Q., Clavelle, J., & Fitzpatrick, J. J. (2016). Emotional
intelligence and transformational leadership in nurse managers. JONA: The Journal of
Nursing Administration, 46(2), 101-108.
Vasilagos, T., Polychroniou, P., & Maroudas, L. (2017). Relationship Between Supervisor’s
Emotional Intelligence and Transformational Leadership in Hotel Organizations.
In Strategic Innovative Marketing (pp. 91-95). Springer, Cham.