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Leadership Program Admission Essay
Employee Biography
While most business professionals may believe that a managerial positions’ experience and the fun derived from it comes with the paycheck, the organization that one works for, or the position that one holds. However, throughout my business management career, I have learnt the fun in the business field comes from serving others and impacting other people’s lives positively. Based on this, I believe that my experience as a manager at a Veterans Affairs (VA) hospital, commonly referred to as a Veterans Health Administration (VHA) hospital, ranks as my best experience. Having had experience with family members who have served in the military, veterans’ struggle to undergo for the sake of the nation can only inspire one to care, empathize, sympathize, and appreciate. For this, therefore, I cherish the opportunity of being able to serve the community through service to America’s veterans.
Currently, I have reserved my focus on serving the United States’ veteran population and work in the largest health care system in the nation and grow my career around the same. As such, I desire to become a senior leader at the Veteran Health Administration. Based on this, the desire to join senior leadership is underscored by the healthcare system’s mission and vision in caring for the veterans and their families while being a part of the more than 364,000 professionals committed to delivering the best healthcare services to this underappreciated population demographic. The need to acquire and build on strong and effective leadership will advance the future healthcare system’s course. Based on this, therefore, I believe that senior leadership will advance my experience and set me up for even greater achievements in the future.
My biggest accomplishment to-date in this career line is becoming a team leader in VHA. To become a team leader, one must be willing to take up the leadership mantle and exemplify themselves as ready to serve others. As a team member, I was concerned with the welfare of others rather than my own. This was facilitated by my self-drive, which enabled me to lunge the team ahead despite not being assigned a leadership role. Gaining the Team leader position, I have committed to serving the VA mission and vision. As such, I believe that, by attending the Virtual Aspiring Supervisor Program, I will realize my next big career achievement, but as is today, being a team leader at VHA is my biggest accomplishment.
Meeting Veteran Hospital’s Priorities
Time management is one of the most important aspects of any managerial or leadership position. This is because it underlines the definition of efficiency, which is often stated as “doing the right thing, at the right time, at the right place, and in the right manner.” As such, my foremost time management strategy was to avoid procrastination. This refers to the transference of activities otherwise supposed to be completed at a set time to later periods or times. The second strategy utilized in time management was ensuring that I had a time check. This implied that I had to identify the time-consuming tasks in my daily routine and establish mediatory strategies that would ensure that less time is lost in them. I realized that most of my time-consuming tasks were centered on in-person discussions and group-work. As such, I ensured that in every group that I was expected to be part of, the members were delegated with specific portions of the entire group assignment to ensure effectiveness and efficiency by reducing the time utilized in discussion suggestions. Third, I ensured that I always set deadlines for my assignments throughout my education, even for those that had time limits provided by the instructors. This enabled me to focus on one task at a time while reducing laxity. To further this strategy, I read ahead of the class to understand the units easier, easing the completion of assignments too, when they came.
Moreover, I ensured that I planned ahead for tasks that were expected to be completed in the short and long-term. This meant that I knew what I was to do at particular days and times of the week, enabling me to remain organized and focused on more urgent matters daily. Knowing that multi-tasking may result in time wastage, especially where assignments may be requested over short deadlines or where tests were to be studied for, I made sure that I always focused on one task first, which enabled me to maintain high levels of performance at all times. For the current program, I believe that I will apply my past time management tactics and improve on them, thus improving my performance tenfold.
Regarding applying my skills from previous training and education, it is worth noting that I have completed my Bachelors in Business Management and Operations. One of the most prominent aspects of the training focused on the maintenance of seamless operations within an organization. These mostly focus on establishing strategies, utilizing proper communication skills within the organization, employment and improvement of proper business practices, and other external task-oriented initiatives. In this line, as a team member and a team leader, I have been directly involved in the oversight of new and upcoming VA community members. This has entailed the maintenance of ethical practice by observing the established institutional policies and provisions by the top management.
Further, I have had to exemplify my ethical leadership abilities to my peers and junior staff, hence ensuring the same throughout the organization. Further, given the constant interactions with veterans in the Veteran Hospital, I have been able to utilize my communications skills, especially where I have encountered emotional patients and staff in the organization, such as those that are frustrated with a long period in the processing of their medical insurance, hence limiting their access to medical services. Further, it is notable that I am currently finishing my post-graduate degree in Business Administration. Given my position as a student and still working within the Veterans Hospital, I have been able to directly apply leadership skills through the combination of personal, interpersonal, and organizational leadership skills. This means that I have had to ensure that I am organized, communicate well, and self-aware, besides being able to establish proper relationships with others and actively fostering the achievement of the overall institutional goals.
Personal Aspiration Statement
Notably, the leadership development program focuses on identifying, molding, and developing individuals occupying the emerging leaders and team leader positions and aspiring to become supervisors within their Veteran Health Institutions. Through the program, such individuals, as those bearing the self-motivation and desire to progress in their career, have their skills sharpened for their future commitments. This means that the program prepares a new cadre of aspiring supervisors prepared to effectively meet the 21st-century challenges. My Virtual Aspiring Supervisor Program application is motivated by the desire to serve the general veteran population better. In itself, the program has proven highly effective in producing some of the highest-ranked members of the society and leaders within the government.
Further, my interest is fueled by the desire to achieve personal discipline to exercise proper leadership in my Veterans hospital position. Further, this would help me effectively impact the policy formulation and other relevant regulatory procedures in the organization, which would then see me directly impact veterans’ lives, particularly by shifting their access to medical services for the better. Based on this, I expect that the program will improve my essential competencies and program new concepts in me that will facilitate my adaptation to the dynamic position of supervisor in the Veterans Affairs leadership position. I expect that such competencies and concepts such as accountability, decisiveness, resilience, strategic thinking and decision-making, technical credibility, and the position of being politically savvy will help me positively impact my institution of operation. I aim to ensure the adherence to ethical principles within the organization, mutual beneficence between the institution and its partners, avoidance of harm to patients at all cost, progression of team goals, and the adherence to the organization’s mission and vision. In this manner, I believe that I will be able to ensure the greater achievement of the patients, organizations, and staff’s goals and desires in the long-term through proper constructive engagement and operations coordination.