Leadership can be defined as a multifaceted process of identifying a goal or target, motivating other people to act, and providing support and motivation to achieve mutually negotiated goals (Porter-O’Grady, 2003) The manager is not always a leader. The team can be inspired and lead by another person. They can always trust their leader, they are ready to cooperate and aware, that their ideas and suggestions will not be ignored. Leadership, whether it is nursing, medical or healthcare leadership, is about knowing how to make visions become reality. (Kitson, 2001)
There are a lot of things that define a true leader in nursing. Effective leaders are required to use problem-solving processes, maintain group effectiveness and develop group identification. (Frankel, 2008) But what are the main principles that form a successful nursing leadership? The great quality of a leader and principle number one is: Commit to excellence (Guyton, 2012) The person needs to do everything perfectly, care about the quality of the work, always learn something new and try to improve the available skills.
As a leader, you have to teach your team to respect the patients. Each them how to prove excellent service, to use a personal approach so the patient can become returning customers. This brings us to the next quality: Build a culture around service (Guyton, 2012)
The next positive qualities, that defines a leader is a concentration on the satisfaction of your group and ability to recognize and reward success. Small and great wins at work have to be rewarded and appreciated by the leader. It is always a pleasure to know that your boss is informed about your quality of work. The important everyday thing for the leader is communicating with employees frequently on all levels: An informed employee is a satisfied employee. (Guyton, 2012)
The last but not the least thing, the leader has to encourage every member of the group to develop leadership qualities, to take responsibility for the actions, to make decisions on the everyday basis. Employees have to be involved in the working process, train their skills and aim to become leaders.
Since I have started my Practical Nursing Programm, I had a pleasure to work with a true leader, who had all the qualities, listed above. It is a great working experience as this person inspiring you to come back to the working place every day. You could always seek for support and help from her. I was talking to other employees and all of them found her their leader. Surprisingly, this person was not a manager, even though she has the needed qualities and skills. But, as we all know, leadership has nothing to do with job positions. Even the best manager can be unsuccessful as a leader.
I can say, that it was her who formed us as a group. Before that, the staff was divided into several sub-groups, that usually did not want to work together. She realized how bad situation is and started to foster the team spirit. She was creating the schedule and stopped to arrange the shift as for those who are used to work together. She mixed people from different sub-groups and made them act together and get to know each other. Also, we had different competitions, that could not be performed individually. For the first time, we started to spend free time together, going for active sports or playing group games. That was the beginning of our team. Even though she was working there for a longer time and was older than me, she never let me call her Misis. We could call each other by the name and we were very comfortable with it.
When I just started my practice, I had a lot of mistakes and I was very ashamed of it. But she never laughed at my failures and helped me to go through it. Now I know, that I can ask her if I am unsure about a decision I am going to make. But when I started to perform better, patients started to notice me as a good worker, she always had some good words for me, that made me proud of myself and motivated me to work even better, to have a target at work.
Also, she was the first person, who told me that patients have to be treated as clients, as well as their parents. Some of us did not smile to patients or even did not greet them. She explained to us how important is it and slowly we started doing it. Now, we are doing it and it happens naturally. I can see, that patients like it and look happier when staff smiles to them. I can say for sure, that helped us to gain faithful clients, who always select us among other clinics.
She always inspires me to be better, to learn from the best workers, to develop my leader’s skills. She gave me an idea how to become a leader among my student group and from time to time she was asking me how the things going. It is always a pleasure to have a friend at work and to see how the team developed with the help of this person. We are thankful for that because we realized how easy is to work when you are the part of the team.
The leadership is important in any area, not only in Nursing. There are a lot of academic works, that study the phenomena. Different ways, principles, and theories help us to build a successful company, starting from building a team. Ans only you decide who you are – the team player or a leader.
References
Frankel, A. (2008). What leadership styles should senior nurses develop?. Nursing Times. Retrieved 16 March 2016, from http://www.nursingtimes.net/clinical-subjects/leadership/what-leadership-styles-should-senior-nurses-develop/1811643.fullarticle
Guyton, N. (2012). Nine principles of successful nursing leadership - American Nurse Today. American Nurse Today. Retrieved 16 March 2016, from http://www.americannursetoday.com/nine-principles-of-successful-nursing-leadership/
Kitson, A. (2001). Nursing leadership: bringing caring back to the future. Quality And Safety In Health Care, 10(Supplement 2), ii79-ii84. http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/qhc.0100079
Porter-O’Grady, T. (2003) A different age for leadership, part 1. Journal of Nursing Administration; 33: 10, 105-110.
