Leadership Skills Summary

Through different ways, leadership skills can be used to effectively facilitate engagement, assessment, intervention, and evaluation with a client. First, great leaders make their clients feel safe. They build trust and cooperation and nurture safe environments. When there are cooperation and trust among leaders, clients feel motivated to make decisions that can significantly impact their lives (Lussier & Achua, 2015). Effective leaders also inspire actions with a strong why. They inspire thEIR followers because they tie actions to a bigger perspective. Effective leaders also have respect for all the individuals they come across. They do not reserve their respect for only those executive-level titles and with high offices; respect is part of their daily interaction. Through effective leadership skills, other staff members will want to support their leader to achieve the clients’ objectives.

Social injustice is among the major problems experienced in contemporary society. Through effective leadership skills and technology, the problem can be addressed. The ability to listen, including being open to others’ ideas and suggestions, is among the most relevant leadership skills that can help tackle the problem (Fernandez et al., 2015). Good leaders accept that sometimes other people have a good idea and might prove more efficient to implement than their concept. They also use social media platforms to borrow ideas on how to tackle the issue. Furthermore, good leaders are adaptable (Lussier & Achua, 2015). When things do not go as intended, they often continue looking forward. Effective leaders also know how to change their approaches toward specific audiences and clients.

An effective method to identify, asses, analyzes a problem, as well as a client’s capacity for change, is through strength-based assessments. This can be established by focusing on the person’s various levels of influence and environment (Redmond & Dolan, 2016). A very critical question and needs to be answered by each person interested in their growth and happiness. There is a need to identify the strengths and weaknesses of different clients, including students, teachers, parents, workers, teenagers, and seniors at the workplace. No one else can identify a person’s strengths and weaknesses except themselves. After identifying their strengths, they can fill up some survey forms which provide some inputs on their personality traits:

Empathy and active listening are important characteristics that a social worker should possess. For social workers, especially those working as psychotherapists, it is fundamental to have empathy while it is a difficult thing to quantify (Fernandez et al., 2015). Empathy, not something that people are tested, and if social workers can empathize better with people, they are likely to treat them better because they understand them better. Active listening is where all the benefits accrue. This is where a social worker can understand the hidden meaning of what the client person is saying. People, in general, use different phrases, expressions, idioms, sentences while they speak. It also helps you to segregate whether it is a phrase, expression, or whether it is a question that the client is trying to express (Redmond & Dolan, 2016). This provides them an opportunity to paraphrase what has been said and come up with an effective solution.

When it comes to leadership, a lot of factors are associated.  It has a lot of dimensions, and individuals cannot simply inherit unless they are born leaders. Social workers need to get exposed to a lot of dimensions in order to acquire those. In short, a lot of skills put together to make one as a leader (Lussier & Achua, 2015). One such skill is what is called communication. One of the dimensions of a leader is to inspire and motivate others or team members. It can be done through actions or words. To do with words, leaders need to communicate in the right manner and in a proper way.

References

Lussier, R. N., & Achua, C. F. (2015). Leadership: Theory, application, & skill development. Nelson Education.

Fernandez, C. S., Noble, C. C., Jensen, E., & Steffen, D. (2015). Moving the needle: A retrospective pre-and post-analysis of improving perceived abilities across 20 leadership skills. Maternal and Child Health Journal, 19(2), 343-352.

Redmond, S., & Dolan, P. (2016). Towards a conceptual model of youth leadership development. Child & Family Social Work, 21(3), 261-271.