I believed the best strength that public health leaders need for success is the imagination, action and proven qualities of understanding individuals and communities with their public health concerns. While the best way to understand individual’s public health concern is to put oneself in his or her shoes, then imagine the reality of vice versa—meaning interchanging oneself from a public leadership status to followership status and vice versa. As stated by Cox, Plagens & Sylla (2010), “leaders and followers both must have the ability to interchange their role”. In addition, leadership is not only a behavioral attitude but includes ethics and intention. An ethical leader is someone who harmonizes beliefs and behaviors in his or her relations with people and their communities. By doing so, the leader enhances fairness, innovates and creates a good environment for all and, therefore, the leader is doing what is “right” for the community (Cox, Plagens & Sylla, 2010).
I interviewed Dr. Suzan X, the Director and Associate professor of the Hauptmann School of Public health Affairs, at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. She is also an adjunct professor of health economics and public health policy. She had acquired extensive working and life experiences, including book publications in the fields of finance, economics, public health, healthcare leadership, and law and fraud prevention. She used to teach courses that include public health theories and public health finance. One of the reasons why I interviewed her because, throughout the semester, I leveled her as attaining the following important sources of good qualities of leadership, namely confidence, mutual vision and action, honesty, motivation, respect and clarity. These were the sources of my full motivation that makes me want to be like her. For example, the first day of the class, Leader X1 stated something that really made me truly understood and appreciated what it was to be motivated. She said but I parroted as a personal statement, “whenever I get out of bed in the morning, I go to the mirror and look at myself, then imagine myself as a leader who educates and inspires people, motivates people, set high performance standards and align people to succeed toward their endeavors.” Her intrinsic and extrinsic public health belief is that when struggling individuals in the communities are extrinsically recognized and felt intrinsically motivated to be self-confidence in overcoming all their difficulties, they will be basically motivated to do more, achieve more, commit to their family, health issues and be happy with what they do which will result in life satisfaction.
At the end of our interview, she made a startling comment that further qualified her to be an effective public health leader. She said, I summarized, one major strength I always rely on is my mental construction–a mindset using personal development tools to manage time and space effectively and to also allow myself live a life of power, purpose and passion with perseverance to help others in need and support struggling communities who desperately may need only our smiles to make them the happiest on earth.
Cox, R. W., Plagens, G. K., & Sylla, K. (2010). The leadership-followership dynamic: Making the choice to follow. International Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences, 5(8), 38-48
