Leadership Approaches For Nurses In The Current Healthcare Environment

Effective Characteristics of a Nurse Leader

Current health care environment is considered to be unsustainable and broken. Highest quality care is desired by the patients and therefore, the reduction in the costs is required. For the purpose of regaining public trust, changes are needed in the health care system along with the adaptation to the current requirements of the patients. However, challenges are created by the different group of stakeholders in the health care system for the purpose of improving value of care. The operative ways for refining the value of care can be best determined by the health care providers. Moreover, the health care providers are required to learn the manner of leading the patients effectively for the purpose of creating change (Hunter, 2016). This essay focuses on the best leadership approach for a nurse in the current health care environment. It describes the characteristics of an effective leader, leadership models for the health care environment and the rationale for the leadership characteristics and the models chosen (Arroliga, Huber, Myers, Dieckert and Wesson, 2014).

Certain characteristics are required to be possessed by the leaders in the current health environment. An effective leader should be capable of making the recognition of the strengths and weaknesses of the individuals in the team along with evaluating the level of effectiveness of each individual. These traits are considered to be desirable and include self- confidence, intelligence, integrity, determination and sociability. It is suggested that there is a relationship between traits of leadership, patient outcomes and staff satisfaction (Zhang, Avery, Bergsteiner, and More, 2014). One of the most important characteristics of an effective leader in nursing is being a role model. This implies that the leader needs to initiate action, an exemplar, and should present them as an example of how the actions should be performed. Further, another important characteristic is to be an inspiration. Through this characteristic, the leaders should aim at inspiring others with a goal and should make the followers see the desired endpoint to their actions. Moreover, the leaders should possess the characteristic of empowerment which allows them in getting other to work. They should also be capable of generating enthusiasm which is considered to be a vital component i.e. getting other to work with passion (Gini and Green, 2014). An effective leader is also capable of establishing two- way communication with the staff members. Effective nursing leader should also demonstrate skills and knowledge relating to all aspects of the delivery of care. There should be complete understanding of the job descriptions along with the responsibilities of employees. They should also possess knowledge regarding the latest techniques along with the understanding of ethical and legal issues that confront the practice of nursing. This can also be linked with the personality and trait leadership theory which provides that the leaders are born with particular characteristics that allows them to lead others and take the command (Spears and Lawrence, 2016).

Servant Leadership Model

The best leadership approach for nurses in the current health care environment is servant leadership. Servant leadership is considered to be the best model due to the reason that it emphasizes on the forte of the team, attending the requirements of the patients and developing trusts. The nurses, as the servant leaders, may be best equipped for making the needed modifications in the organization and in the patient- provider relationship for improving the value of care for patient. The main emphasis of the servant nurse leader is on the success of the team through the performance of the individual team members (Harden and Fulop, 2015). This leadership approach has gained popularity over the past few years. In this style, the needs of the team members are targeted by the leader while ensuring that they have the requisite relationships, tasks and tools for achieving the individual and group goals. This style works in the best possible manner when there are diverse members that work on different tasks with different responsibilities. However, there are possibilities that this style doesn’t work well in cases when the top decisions are required to be made or collective directions are to be followed by the group (Gunnarsdóttir, Edwards and Dellve, 2018).

A nurse servant leader constantly makes the evaluation of the needs and requirements of his/ her staff in order to help them in resolving their problems along with promoting personal development.  The servant leaders have the ability of providing the service which also regarded as their primary motivator for the purpose of seeking a leadership role. The most important characteristics of a servant leader are awareness, healing, empathy, listening, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, building community, commitment to the growth of people.  The servant leadership is embraced by a number of nurses in the form of a philosophy that offer the required guidance in their practice. This type of leadership is considered to be a caring leadership that assists in building trust due to believe of the followers that the leader have genuine concern for them.  This psychological safety experienced by the employees results in high level of employee engagement in the job. In this way, the servant leaders are capable of building a healthy work environment along with attracting and retaining staff (Van Dierendonck, Stam, Boersma, De Windt. and Alkema, 2014).  

However, there are certain challenges faced while performing the role of a servant leader in the health care environment.  The nurses while undertaking servant leadership perform the task of motivating and supporting good employee conduct and performance, literal service to the employees goes against the integral business structures (Denis and van Gestel, 2016). Moreover, another challenge is related to the lack of authority due to which they are unable to execute the management of the health care organization. The servant leaders in nursing can push other employees for performing better but is a challenging task for them to step back into this role as a dominant figure (Kwon and Yang, 2016). They may also face the challenge of leading towards demotivation of other employees which leads to the reduction of their productivity levels. Also, there is a difference between the regular employees and the leaders by their role of providing direction and developing vision. The servant leaders are required to be have some sort of detachment from the employees for the purpose of exploring new opportunities, resolving problems, brainstorming ideas, etc. Only this separation can assist the leaders in focusing on the vision and providing directions to the employees. Other challenges faced by the leaders in the health care environment include figuring out what needs to be done and making things happen (Winston and Fields, 2015).

Challenges Faced by Nurse Leaders

Another form of leadership that can prove to be useful is democratic leadership style. In the context of nursing, the democratic leadership style will perform the function of enhancing the participation of lower level employees in the process of decision making in the organization. However, the final decision is taken the leader itself, still the leader collects feedback, ideas, and information from all the members of the staff before coming to a conclusion. In nursing, the democratic leadership style is considered to be effective due to the fact that all the employees are given equal importance and value. This importance and value leads them to give their best efforts for the achievement of the goals. It can be further linked with the relational theories which recognize leadership in the form of a reciprocal interaction between the followers and the leaders (Parés, Ospina and Subirats, 2017). The good leadership have the hallmark of being the transformation of the followers who are committed to the vision of the leader. This leadership style is best in the context of clinical settings as the abilities and skills of all he professional make equal contribution towards the organizational success. However, there are some disadvantages of adopting this leadership style in nursing as obtaining the feedback of each and every individual is a time consuming process. Moreover, there are some confident group of members who always give suggestions and stay ahead while the apprehensive employees do not get the opportunities to offer their feedback.

Various authors have conducted studies for the purpose of finding evidences based rationale for the leadership characteristics and models. It is essential that the strengths and weaknesses of the every person is recognized by the effective leader. The listed characteristics of an effective leader are difficult to be ranked due to the fact that all the identified characteristics are required to be possessed by the good leader ideally (Connelly, 2016). Moreover, the idea of leadership is fragmented if one leadership characteristic is considered to be more important than another. It is essential that motivating and communication skills are possessed by the leaders in order to be effective. Also, the ability to delegate the duties in an effective manner are required to be possessed by the leaders along with the skills developed during their work tenure in the given field and the knowledge regarding the duties performed by their employees. Moreover, the leaders should be flexible, proactive, able to set objectives and good role models. Also, good leaders should act in participative leadership with all the members of the staff at every level. There are challenges faced on the continuous basis in the act of leading and therefore, the leaders should achieve a balance between the accomplishment of the work goals and meeting of the requirements of the staff members in feeling empowered with autonomy and valued for addressing the needs of the patients. A complex series of functions are involved in the process of being a leader for the purpose of guiding the physical resources and people towards positive results for the facility, the individual and the patient (McKeown and Carey, 2015).

Democratic Leadership Style

The democratic leadership style and the servant leadership model are appropriate for health care environment. Servant leadership have the capability of saving the health care profession. His model is associated with a number of favorable employee outcomes and involves favorable job attitudes, better psychological well- being, improved job performance and reduced workplace deviancy. In the form of the servant leaders, the health care nurses can be best prepared for making changes in the organization and in the patient- provider relationship for improving the value of care for patients (Denker, Sherman, Hutton- Woodland, Brunell and Medina, 2015). On the other hand, democratic leadership style will make the use of democratic principles such as inclusiveness, deliberation, self- determination and equal participation. This, in turn, will lead to the empowerment of staff members, aid the process of group decision making and effective delegation of responsibility. In other words, it will assist the leader in achieving the goals of the health care organization by way of providing the needed direction to the members of the staff (Antonakis and Day, 2017).

Therefore, it can be concluded that the current health care environment is unsustainable and broken. Challenges are created by the different group of investors in the health care system for the purpose of improving value of care. The operative ways for refining the value of care can be best determined by the health care providers. Moreover, the health care providers are required to learn the manner of leading the patients effectively for the purpose of creating change. An effective leader should have self- confidence, intelligence, integrity, determination and sociability. The best leadership approach for nurses in the current health care environment is servant leadership. Democratic leadership style can also be used in the given context.

References

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