Top Three Insights on the Essence of Leadership

The Essence of Leadership – Top Three Insights
Student Full Name
Institutional Affiliation
Course Full Title
Instructor Full Name
Due Date
The Essence of Leadership – Top Three Insights
One of the top insights into leadership I gained from the lessons and experiences discussed in the readings and videos is that everyday leadership involves listening. Every day, leaders realize that they do not know everything, even those most passionate subjects. Therefore, they are willing to listen to other experts and enthusiasts' diverse opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives, including those they disagree with (GreggU, 2018). This particular leadership trait can be transferred to public health practice in diverse ways. For instance, nonprofit hospitals can apply active listening when conducting regular assessments of community needs every three years as the Affordable Care Act requires. For the most part, Community Health Needs Assessments (CHNAs) have taken a quantitative, population-level approach and neglected the qualitative aspects required to tailor health services better to meet the unique needs of their communities. One-way nonprofit hospital leaders can incorporate active listening in their CHNAs is by using qualitative data collection methods to integrate residents’ voices, especially those of minority groups, into the assessment process.
Unlike quantitative, population-level, data collection methods, which can encourage number fetishism (unnecessary focus on statistics that often leads to false, misleading, biased, and overly narrow conclusions), qualitative data collection methods are better at capturing the diverse opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives of community members. Qualitative interviews are better at capturing the human experience and encourage valuable conversations about how nonprofit hospitals can best support the health needs of residents. Including community members in meaningful conversations about existing needs is critical to reducing health disparities and establishing collaborative coalitions (Cain et al., 2016). Collaboration between communities and nonprofit hospitals is essential for acting on the data collected through quantitative methods. Relying on quantitative methods alone prohibits active listening and may result in community members feeling that the hospital is unwilling to invest in their needs. Besides, numbers by themselves cannot provide a comprehensive and in-depth understanding of community health needs and often result in health initiatives that lack that human element to make them more meaningful and relevant for community members.
The second top insight into leadership I gained from the lessons and experiences discussed in the readings and videos is that leaders are passionate and turn their passions into a mission (GreggU, 2018). Health educators passionate about social justice can apply their passion for addressing social disparities that underlie the disproportionate impacts of natural epidemics on minority communities. For instance, the Covid-19 epidemic disproportionately impacted African Americans and other low-income minority communities due to historical social injustices that severely limit their access to healthcare res...