How Nurse Supervisors Can Empower Subordinates

Participative Leadership in Nursing The participative style of leadership is considered among the best in the nursing field, because leaders with this attribute are good listeners and they seek input from others when making decisions about patient care or other issues in a healthcare setting. I was and I am a participative leader in nursing. Everyone has had -- at one point in his or her professional careers -- a boss or supervisor who was dictatorial, or nearly so.

This supervisor or boss was the kind of person who had all the answers, wouldn't listen to input from employees, and tended towards arrogance and pushiness rather than cooperation and helpful interaction. I have had bosses like that, and that kind of situation does not create trust but rather creates a feeling of being intimidated and treated like a person with little value.

However, I have also had supervisors that understood the importance of developing a good relationship with staff, and these supervisors created an environment that was friendly, positive and productive. This kind of leadership is referred to as participative, which means that everyone in the workplace participates in some meaningful way. This is the path I chose when I embarked on this career.

Participative leadership means building better relationships with staff because everyone is a participant -- albeit, when the final decision is to be made, the supervisor has to make the call. Participative leadership fits perfectly into my philosophical approach to nursing, especially today as so many new medicines are on the market, new techniques are being presented, and the level of training for RNs -- and those nurses that have moved into more specialized aspects of nurses -- has risen substantially.

I know that there are technologies used in healthcare situations that I am not immediately comfortable with. I don't have a history of intuitiveness when it comes to a new technology introduced into a ward, but I know there are nurses who are more intuitive than I, and by embracing that other nurse's knowledge (who may not be in a supervisory position), I am creating trust and empowering myself and the nurse who does understand technologies better than I do.

The attributes of leadership that may be needed for graduate level nurses. Graduate level nurses may have more skills and more general knowledge, but leadership is far more than just skills and knowledge. It is about embracing the skills and knowledge of those nurses around you. Graduate level nurses need to recognize this. Meanwhile, in the peer-reviewed Journal of Organizational Behavior the authors discuss two theoretical models of participative leadership.

The "motivational model" takes the position that the more opportunities that staff members have to actually be part of the decision-making process, the more those staff members (in this case, nurses) will have for "greater intrinsic rewards" from their work (Huang, 2010). In fact, when a nurse leader shares decision-making with her subordinates, those subordinates become empowered and this can result in "improved work performance" (Huang, 122). It can easily be seen that the supervising nurse will also become empowered when she or he involves subordinates in decision-making.

Why? Because in this age of advancing technologies and expanding roles for healthcare professionals, a supervising nurse can't possibly know everything, and can't be up on every new technological device or strategy, but chances are one or more of her underlings will know about those new developments and by sharing that knowledge with a supervising nurse, everyone is empowered.

The second theoretical model of participative leadership is the "exchange-based model," which has value because this kind of leadership sends a message that "…the superior has confidence in, and concern and respect for the subordinates" (Huang, 122). So the key word when discussing the exchange-based model is trust: leadership that listens to everyone on the staff and takes what they contribute seriously is establishing trust with a staff.

On page 123 Huang explains that not only does the act of listening to subordinates create trust, it is likely to create a workplace climate where underlings "…reciprocate their superiors as well as their organizations by exhibiting a higher level of work performance." The author explains why both motivational and exchange-based models are important when considering the dynamics in a hospital or other clinical workplace.

For one, participative leadership is vitally important because research has shown that lower level employees tend to "…place more emphasis on the quality of their relationships with colleagues and supervisors" (Huang, 123). For higher level positions those individuals tend to place more emphasis on "control and autonomy." So if those two levels of nursing can be brought together through participatory leadership that can pave the way for a more productive workplace where trust is an important part of the equation.

My attributes and those I may need to develop In the Journal of Nursing Management the author, Ann Tomey points to research that shows doctors are members of "expert cultures," and doctors are typically motivated by "accomplishment and power." Doctors have always competed for the best grades, the best jobs, and have developed an attitude towards success entailing "outperforming the competition rather than.