Management and Leadership in Nursing

Through leadership a nurse is able to motivate employees and guide them to achieve the goals set for by that department or company.

The qualities of an effective nurse leader are: Integrity, honesty, trustworthy, courage (the ability to take a risk when needed), Initiative (the ability to act on your own or others good ideas), effort and energy, optimism (the ability to see a problem and turn it into an opportunity), perseverance (the ability to not give up easily), a good balance between work and life, ability to handle stress with a healthy and positive outlook, and self awareness (understanding what motivates others and yourself).

While there is much involved to becoming an effective leader the behaviors of an effective leader are just as important. A leader should be able to critically think, solve problems, be able to respect and listen to others, and encourage the exchange of information and ideas between employees, provide feedback, setting specific goals, and be able to effectively communicate future visions and goals.

There are many types of power that comes with leadership, expert, coercive and charismatic. Expert comes from the respect of your employees and others that they have for the leader's abilities, skills and knowledge. While coercive is based on the fears employees and others may have from retribution or the withholding of rewards or perks. Charismatic would come from the leaders ability to attract and inspire their employees.

Leaders and their employees understand there are various types of leadership styles. While some types of jobs one style will work others it won't.

An autocratic leadership style is very controlling and dominating. This type of style will maintain a very strong control and will make and solve all the problems for the group; they will not share the responsibility or the authority with any of their employees. The autocratic leader will dominate the group and make the commands they will not seek out suggestions or input from their employees. The autocratic leadership style works best when the leader carries more knowledge then the group as a whole.

A democratic leadership style acts more as a facilitator and resource person for their employees. As a democratic leader the leader is more concerned for each member of their group and is more participative and less authoritative then the autocratic leader. A democratic leader shares in the decision making, planning and shares the responsibilities with their employees. The democratic leadership style works best when each member of the group is knowledgeable and willing to work towards to accomplishing the team's goals that have been set worth. This is the most effective style of leadership when it comes to nursing.

The laissez-faire would be the least effective nursing leadership style as the laissez-faire leader will try to please everyone and will focus more on the feelings of their employees. This type of leader will adopt a more passive, nondirective and inactive approach. The leadership responsibilities are either assumed by the group or completely relinquished. This type of leadership is often not used in a health care setting.