Nurse Leader Interviews paper
Introduction: A leader is anyone who relies on the usage of interpersonal skills to influence team members to do particular objectives or a task. (Porter-O’Grady and Malloch, 2015). Nurses are supposed to exhibit leadership skills in their practice settings regardless of them being granted power through authority. They often portray the influence on stakeholders in the clinical setting using behaviors that can get emulated by others, or by utilizing the acquired leadership skills. Subsequently, successful leadership strategies enable them to earn respect and trust from colleagues that they lead due to their team-building capacity and inspiration.
In essence, nurse leaders strive to ensure that healthcare providers consistently stick and remain committed to the health organization’s mission, vision, values, and both the short-term and long-term goals. In my capacity, I deliberately interviewed three formal nurse leaders who expressed a preference for a unique leadership style that is applicable in the healthcare sector. They all are from my state and can get identified as Dr. Pie, Dr. Que, and Mrs. Arh.
Choice of Each Individual Leader
The first encounter was with Mrs. Arh. She is a nursing practitioner (an RN), a manager of an intensive care unit in a state hospital. She insisted on her strategy of serving others. Besides, there are several instances where her claim of adopting the style was due to the influence of nursing professionalism. She described nursing as a discipline that requires a nurse to act in the best interest of clients’ and patients’ needs. As a result, she was able to learn on how to sideline her interests for others becoming a part of her skills in providing service in the health care setting enabling her to get a promotion to a managerial position. Progressively, she is always in a position to share power with colleagues at the departmental level. The same way she always puts the clients’ needs above, is the same way she puts those of employees first, including the subordinate staff. In such circumstances, Mrs. Arh has an interest in helping colleagues to develop to high levels as well as helping patients acquires quality care to improve their health. At all time, she challenges herself, whether the less advantaged in society benefit from her leadership. In the end, she recalled the nursing principles of caring, service, growth, and health for others for all nurse leaders. She demonstrated servant leadership.
Dr. Pie exhibited a strong personality right from the start of the interview. He had already earned a doctorate in the nursing management and had newly acquired the position of a dean in a college of nursing in the state. Dr. Pie opined that he relied on a strategy of encouraging positive behaviors among colleagues and in most cases, gets the job done or enables his team to meets a set target. Subjectively, he demonstrated brilliant communication and communication skills. He could point out that he relied on his personal qualities, persuasive communication, and persuasiveness to influence health care providers and organizational members whenever he led them. Being in a position to motivate those he led in ensuring that objectives get met is one of his most prominent ability. He leads on a profound, emotional level in articulating a captivating vision among colleagues. (Porter-O’Grad and Malloch, 2015). He explained how he uses his ability most of the time to turn inefficiency into a stepping stone and a stronghold by evoking strong emotions of elevating his followers hence demonstrating charismatic leadership.
Moreover, there is an acknowledgment that he relied on persuasiveness, personal power, self-confidence, firm conviction as personal qualities to motivate members of an organization. The personality can arouse great affection and emotional commitment to the leader himself and then to the followers.
I involved Dr. Que in the third interview. Being a director of nursing services in one of the state hospitals, the nurse expressed constant efforts of encouraging, inspiring and motivating nurses towards embracing innovation, evidence-based practice and creates change in improving the quality of care according to patients. He remained concerned with affecting revolutionary change in the facility and human service. He indicated that inspiration and motivation of nurses’ workforce by trusting employees to take authority in decision-making within their roles of patient care. Besides, he pinpointed the pros associated with giving employees opportunities of growth through creativity for innovation, developing their abilities for the future which is the overall goal being organizational growth through the betterment of the corporate systems. Most importantly, he has encouraged the facility to design a teaching, training, and mentorship program to enable employees to prepare for future leadership. He demonstrated transformational leadership.
All of the above leaders chosen got influenced by a major factor. I focused on contemporary leadership styles since they are effective and widely utilized in today’s phase of leadership. They are different from the traditional leadership styles where leaders focused on the productivity of their organizations and not employee motivation.
Comparison and Contrast of Transformational and Servant Leadership
Mrs. Arh and Dr. Que demonstrated servant leadership and transformational leadership styles, respectively while Dr. Pie utilized charismatic leadership type. Transformational leadership emphasizes interpersonal relationships to generate the commitment of employees to an organization’s vision. According to Fischer (2016), the method enables the leader to entrust followers to have authority in decision-making in their assigned duties and responsibilities to encourage growth. Also, such leaders rely on encouraging and motivating employees to get creative, especially in the healthcare industry, to come up with innovations and utilizing evidence-based practice for positive outcomes as demonstrated by Dr. Qie. On the other hand, servant leadership entails a leader’s ability to put his or her interests aside to serve the interests of employees hence motivating them to get committed to the organization’s goals. (Anderson, 2016).
Dr. Pie uses the strategy of encouraging positive behaviors among colleagues and in most cases, gets the job done or enables his team to meets a set target. He demonstrated brilliant communication and communication skills. He could point out that he relied on his personal qualities, persuasive communication, and persuasiveness to influence health care providers and organizational members whenever he led them. In charismatic type of leadership, a leader’s personality arouses great affection through emotional commitment in an organization. (Porter-O’Grady, & Malloch, 2015).
Mrs. Arh demonstrated servant leadership based on the nursing principles of nursing of caring, service to others, growth in the profession, and prioritizing health to others. There is also an aspect of being subordinate and sharing the power to colleagues to motivate them to view leadership as an avenue of service to others. The fundamental focus of the transformational leader is transforming the organization and the followers during the process, while the charismatic leader could be quite satisfied with the status quo. (Van Dierendonck, Stam, Boersma, De Windt, & Alkema, 2014).
Missed Questions
After the interviews, there was a brainstorming session, and I later realized that there were questions that I missed asking the participants. Following a focused comprehension, I realized that each leadership style suits a particular clinical situation in the delivery of healthcare. The missed questions that were to get introduced in the course of the interview for each interviewee include:
(a) What are the pros and cons of your leadership style do you consistently identify?
(b If you were to write a comprehensive report on the different leadership styles you have utilized over time, how many are they and when are they reliable?
(c) Which leadership style would you recommend to young nurses as part of mentorship?
References
Anderson, D. (2016). Servant leadership, emotional intelligence: Essential for baccalaureate nursing students. Creative nursing, 22(3), 176-180.
Fischer, S. A. (2016). Transformational leadership in nursing: a concept analysis. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 72(11), 2644-2653.
Porter-O’Grady, T., & Malloch, K. (2015). Leadership in nursing practice. Jones & Bartlett Publishers.
Van Dierendonck, D., Stam, D., Boersma, P., De Windt, N., & Alkema, J. (2014). Same difference? Exploring the differential mechanisms linking servant leadership and transformational leadership to follower outcomes. The Leadership Quarterly, 25(3), 544-562.
