In this module, we introduce the three leadership essentials that underlie our specialization. We'll build on these concepts that will enable you to gain perspective on your own leadership skills, and how best to use them in various nursing informatics scenarios. Our learning objectives are to understand leadership essentials, to apply them across nursing informatics leadership scenarios, and to describe clarification of a shared purpose as a unifying concept, to gain appreciation for the role of nursing informatics leaders in achieving optimal organizational outcomes. There are three leadership essentials that we will address throughout this specialization. Foremost, is self knowledge; understanding who we are and our own values, beliefs, and biases. Knowing oneself, a leader can recognize values of other individuals in organizations, which is fundamental to the next essential; aligning people, process and purpose. Nursing informatics leaders need to align people, process and purpose as a foundation for the third essential; understanding and managing competing values that challenge us in reaching agreement and achieving our goals. In this module, we will focus on the broad overview of discovering our own values and gaining insight into the alignment of people, process, and purpose; the first two of these three essentials. In the next module, we will introduce the competing values framework as our overarching conceptual framework for this specialization. The first leadership essential; know yourself, acknowledges that we have values, beliefs, and opinions that influence our perceptions. The more we know what these are, the better we'll be able to understand other people in organizations. In this module, we'll raise the importance of self knowledge for Nursing Informatics leaders. How do you feel about the visibility and voice of nurses and our role in informatics? What values drive you to lead? What is the greater good you will strive to achieve? In course 3, Doctor Pesut will guide you through creating your own value statement as a Nursing Informatics leader. In preparation, reflect on the values you observe in the stories of the pioneers in course 2 and those of the other nursing informatics leaders, and consider whether these values are similar to or different from yours. The second leadership essential is aligning people, process, and purpose. Let's consider the notion of aligning people with process and purpose. We as informatics leaders, recognize that understanding people, collaborating with others, and networking effectively will help us to define and achieve our desired purpose. In addition, people have unique strengths, values, and beliefs which may compete with those of others, and thus the need to align people with one another around your common goals. You will hear stories of pioneers in course 2, who emphasize the value of mentoring and being mentored, and the amazing strides in Nursing Informatics that took place, because Nursing Informatics leaders understood the importance of aligning people with process and purpose. Why be concerned with process? Process is what happens during transitioning from a current state to a desired state. Doctor Pesut will examine process at length in course 3. Here, we will simply acknowledge the transitioning from the current to desired state involves many stakeholders. To be effective, it is critical to understand the context and current process using your insider perspective about organizational processes. If you're consulting as a Nursing Informatics leader, you may wish to use some of the many tools available to conduct an organizational scanner assessment. Your goal is to formulate a comprehensive holistic perspective of the current state and factors that contribute to the gap between the current and desired state. When you and your team or organization reach shared understanding of this gap, you're ready to align people, process, and purpose. Why emphasize purpose? Because when you reach shared understanding of your purpose, it's much more likely that you'll achieve it. Likely, your purpose is to achieve the desired state or greater good as defined by your stakeholders. Make sure to state your purpose clearly and in writing so that you can measure your progress toward achieving it. When people and process are aligned with purpose, leaders are positioned to achieve optimal outcomes. Again, Doctor Pesut will deepen this content with a detailed discussion of the synthesis and alignment in course 3, as you explore knowledge complexity and logical levels model. For me, aligning people, process and purpose was achievable because I was already recognized as a leader in the public health department. In the culture of the department was to align with the vision and purpose of our leaders and decision makers. I relied on my values as an employee of the health department to serve the greater good. In my scenario, that meant shopping for EHR software that would enable public health nurses to provide documentation data that could be used to show outcomes. In this way, we would demonstrate the value of our services in improving population health. Now in our discussion for this module, describe people, process and purpose in your Nursing Informatics leadership scenario. How do your own values align with the leadership needs of this scenario? Then, complete the required readings and take the quiz to test your new knowledge.
