Nursing leaders in healthcare have the ability to lead self through self-awareness, adaptability, self management, agility, and purposeful leadership. Nursing leaders lead others by effective team management, the ability to build and sustain relationships, promotes diversity and individual strengths, develops others, and has effective communication skills. The leaders lead the organization through the process of leading change, ability to problem solve, decision making skills and managing the work flow, oversee politics and provide influence to others, push the boundaries of expansion, and is a visionary and provides strategies. They lead health care through professional organizations, providing leadership on boards and panels, through inter-professional situations, by political and legislative work, and providing leadership to improve health care. A leader is not someone that has to be in a position of power. They just have to be doing the right thing and have people following them. A leader is someone that everyone else wants to be like. A leader, leads by example and not by words. (Fitzpatrick & Glazer, 2013). This chapter did not change how I would have described a leader. If anything it just solidified on what I think a good leader is. The leadership styles that I observed in our facility are the autocratic, laissez-faire, and democratic. I would like to say that we have a good mix of these styles of leadership, but that would not be the case. We have a large pool of autocratic and laissez-faire leaders with a small pool of democratic. Each of these styles of leaders are effective in their own rights and under the right circumstances,however when you are trying to operative a business, keep your staff and customers satisfied, maintain economic stability, and develop upcoming leaders, you need effective leadership in the building. Our facility needs to find a better balance between our leadership styles, you want to foster independent thinkers who are able to lead teams, but those leaders must be able to foster new leaders while creating the needed change.
Fitzpatrick, J., & Glazer, G. (Eds.). (2013). Nursing leadership from the outside in. Retrieved from https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.ezproxy.fhsu.edu
Hi Miranda,
You did a great job discussing what leadership means. I completely agree that a higher position of power does not automatically equal leadership. You discussed the different types of leadership styles you observe in your facility. Are any of your leaders very flexible or adaptable in their leadership styles? I feel this is such an important trait for leaders to have. As a preceptor, I struggled with learning how to adapt my teaching style to meet the needs of some of our newer nurses learning styles. I am a very hands on person and I tend to teach that way, however, this hasn’t always been the best learning style and I have had to learn how to be flexible as a preceptor.
Hi Miranda,
Great description of a leader! I completely agree with you that a leader leads by example and not by words. I like that you said a leader leads the organization through problem solving and decision making. This is so important! A leader should help and support the team in this and not solve the problem for them or make the decision for them! Great job!