Leading a health task force through malaria prevention program Essay

Leading a health task force through malaria prevention program - Essay Example The situation I have chosen is where a group of health professional is carrying out a malaria prevention program in the community. As the leader of the task force, I am required to exhibit leadership equation, power of vision, significance of ethics, ability to empower people, principles of leadership, human abilities and understanding, high level of effectiveness, ability to develop other people, and performance management. This paper will hence focus on the mentioned leadership components that I will exhibit in leading the task force through a malaria prevention program. Leadership equation During my reign as a leader of the task force, I will prefer a group leadership to an individual leadership. As opposed to individual leadership where one person leads the whole group, group leadership encourages the whole team to act as leaders. This approach will aid in increasing effectiveness, creativity and even reducing costs. This energizes the team and makes them feel an elevated level o f empowerment. Leading a team through a prevention program requires much time as it involves straining circumstances. It involves dealing with community at the grass root level where there is a low literacy level. It also requires ample time to empower community members to adopt the measures provided by the team members. The community will have to be taught and trained on how they can prevent malaria from making a better part of them. It will also involve distribution of treated mosquito bed nets. This will mean the community will be trained on how to use these bed nets. It will be the work of the team to ask the community to observe various causes of malaria in order to avoid infections. Above all, the community will be empowered in order to keep observing the measures of malaria prevention. After the program, there will be a monitoring and evaluation session to ensure the program is effective after which the team can pronounce success of the program. The whole of these activities requires much cooperation from the team members. Therefore as a team leader, I will have to exhibit distinct leadership traits, behavior, styles and qualities. The team is also expected to show effective characteristics of a well functioning team in order to provide the right condition of working together and providing leadership. As a leader I will provide awareness of unity to all members of the team. The members will also have the ability to develop interpersonal relationship where every member gets a chance to learn from each other and contribute to work. I will also use my leadership to enhance togetherness towards achieving our common goal. My team will exhibit characteristics of a well functioning team including: Members share a sense of purpose and reason for existence of the team and invest their time in obtaining the goals and mission of the team. Members share priorities with one another; they know what has to be done by whom and by when the goals are to be achieved. Memb ers are definite about their roles. Everyone knows what tasks to do and when to give team experts a chance to do specific task. Members understand the line of decision making and authority. Members deal with conflicts openly and consider them significant to personal growth and decision making. Members appreciate each other’s personal traits and feel their distinct personalities well utilized and appreciated. Members have set group norms that enable them work together and are observed as the group standards for