D155 Task 2 Personal Mastery Reflection Example

Personal Mastery Reflection: What Five Catheterization Lab Scenarios Showed a New Nurse Manager About Her Defaults, and the Practice Each One Calls For

Student Name

Leavitt School of Health, Western Governors University

D155: Leading with Personal Mastery, Task 2

Course Instructor

Month Day, Year

Personal Mastery Reflection: What Five Catheterization Lab Scenarios Showed a New Nurse Manager About Her Defaults, and the Practice Each One Calls For

Introduction

Personal mastery, as Senge (1990) describes it, is the discipline of continually clarifying what we want while seeing current reality clearly. He argues that the gap between the two is a source of creative tension rather than a reason for discouragement. Working through five leadership scenarios set in a composite cardiac catheterization lab gave me a way to see my current reality as a new nurse manager. In each scenario I first wrote the response I would give on a good day, then asked what I would actually do on a bad one. The distance between those two answers is what this reflection is about. I discuss each power skill in turn, what came naturally, what did not, how my responses might be received by staff with different backgrounds, and the specific practice I will adopt.

Giving, Receiving and Incorporating Feedback

The scenario in which a senior technologist criticized my turnover checklist in public was the hardest to write honestly. My written response invited him to show me the problem, which is right. My real first reaction, the one I recognized from last month, would have been to explain why the checklist exists. Explaining feels reasonable, but to the person giving feedback it sounds like a refusal. Stone and Heen (2014) point out that feedback from someone we have a relationship with is especially hard to hear, and he trained me when I was new. I also noticed that I am far better at giving feedback than receiving it; I plan corrective conversations carefully but receive criticism with no plan at all.

Practice. For the next three months, when anyone criticizes a decision of mine, my first sentence will be a question about what they saw. I will keep a short log of feedback received and what I changed as a result, and review it with my director monthly.

Adapting to Ambiguity

The contrast shortage scenario came more easily, and I think I know why: clinical emergencies taught me to act on incomplete information. What the scenario showed me is that my comfort with ambiguity is limited to clinical situations. When the ambiguity is administrative, such as an unannounced budget cut or a policy nobody has written yet, I wait for instructions from above. Snowden and Boone (2007) describe the leader's job in complex situations as creating conditions for patterns to emerge, not waiting for a right answer. My written response of a one-week rule reviewed every morning is sound; my risk is not taking that step until someone gives me permission.

Practice. When a problem arrives without a policy, I will draft a temporary rule within one shift and send it to my director as a proposal rather than a question.

Empathy and Inclusive Collaboration

The scenario about the quiet nurse educated in the Philippines made me uncomfortable in a useful way. My written response, asking her privately what would help, reflects what I believe. But I recognized in the technologist's comment, that she seems slow, a judgment I have made myself about new staff who do not speak up. I have tended to read silence as a lack of confidence or competence, when it may reflect a norm learned elsewhere about who is allowed to question whom. Edmondson (1999) showed that team members voice concerns once they judge that doing so carries no penalty, and that the leader's behavior shapes that belief more than any policy does.

I also considered how my response might be received. A private meeting with a manager could feel threatening to someone from a strongly hierarchical workplace, however kindly it is meant. Framing the meeting as something I do with every new hire, and holding it in the break room rather than my office, would lower that threat.

Practice. I will hold a thirty-day conversation with every new hire, using the same three questions, so that no one feels singled out, and I will track who speaks at huddles for a month to see whether my perception matches the record.

Working Through Complex Problems

The call response scenario revealed my strongest default: I like to fix things quickly. When the physicians said the team arrived late, my instinct was to tighten the arrival rule. Writing the scenario forced me to see that a stricter rule aimed at one cause would have added to the fatigue that may be causing the delay. The better response, mapping the chain from page to table with the people who work it, takes longer and makes me look less decisive in the short term.

Staff from different roles would likely receive the mapping exercise differently. Technologists who feel overlooked may welcome being asked; physicians may see it as a delay. Explaining the time limit, three weeks to a finding, would help both groups accept it.

Practice. For any problem that crosses more than one role, I will not propose a solution until I have asked one person from each role to describe the problem in their own words.

Emotional and Cultural Intelligence

In the scenario with the angry son in the waiting room, I stepped in and took over. That was appropriate in the moment, but I recognized a pattern: I rescue staff from hard conversations and then feel resentful that I have to. Goleman (1998) identifies self-awareness as the foundation of the other emotional intelligence competencies, and this scenario showed me that my rescuing is partly about my own discomfort with watching someone struggle. The system change I wrote, a timed family update for any case running late, is better leadership than my rescue, because it builds capacity instead of dependence.

Practice. After any conversation I take over, I will debrief with the staff member within the shift and ask what support would let them handle the next one themselves.

Conclusion

Across the five scenarios, one theme stands out. My written answers describe a leader who asks before acting, and my real defaults describe one who acts before asking: defending, waiting for permission, judging silence, fixing fast and rescuing. Personal mastery, as Senge (1990) describes it, does not require pretending the gap is not there; it requires holding the gap in view long enough to close it deliberately. The five practices above are small and observable. I will review all five with my director at my six-month evaluation and ask her which one she has seen change and which one she has not.

References

Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350-383. https://doi.org/10.2307/2666999

Goleman, D. (1998). What makes a leader? Harvard Business Review, 76(6), 93-102.

Senge, P. M. (1990). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization. Doubleday.

Snowden, D. J., & Boone, M. E. (2007). A leader's framework for decision making. Harvard Business Review, 85(11), 68-76.

Stone, D., & Heen, S. (2014). Thanks for the feedback: The science and art of receiving feedback well. Viking.