Leadership Styles in Nursing

Comparison of Leadership Models and Styles
Part One
My personal model of leadership is participative. I like to get everyone’s opinion when engaging in decision-making. By gaining their inputs, it allows everyone to feel like a stakeholder in the organization and to feel that their thoughts are valued and their opinions respected. They also feel that what they say makes a difference, so long as the leader is able to reflect their input in the final decision. As a leader, ultimately, the decision comes down to me—but as a leader it is also important for me to stay informed about what others are thinking and what I can do to reflect their values more within the company. As a doctorally prepared advanced practice nurse, my aim would be to include people in the decision-making process as much as possible. This means I would be putting their need to be heard and listened to and acknowledge ahead of my need to make decisions. It would benefit all of us in the sense that I would be more informed about what my workers want and how they see things, and in that sense I would be better prepared to assist them in their professional development.
My personal model of leadership reflects a process of servant leadership in the sense that it allows me to cater to the needs of others through specific actions of listening, hearing, acknowledging and reciprocating. Servant leadership is about putting the needs of others first, but it is also dependent on the ability to act in a way that assists the individual worker in growing and developing professionally and personally (Russell & Stone, 2002). In order to listen to workers and hear their concerns, a leader has to do more than call a meeting, however. The leader also has to recognize what is not being said verbally: it is about using one’s social and emotional intelligence to hear them and to understand what they are saying even in non-verbal forms of communication, and then responding to those needs accordingly (Cacamis & El Asmar, 2014). A participative type of servant leadership allows me to do just that by asking my workers for input and inviting them to be part of the process of change. As all workers need to develop accountability skills, this process encourages development by putting them at the center of the decision-making process. They get to observe how what they say has in impact on the organization and then they get the opportunity to take ownership of that change. I put my position as a leader to the side for a moment and focus wholly on them and give them the opportunity to speak and to tell me about what they would like. Afterwards, they recognize that they are expected to the standards that are applied as a result of their input and this facilitates their professional growth.
Servant leadership can be compared to other styles of leadership, such as transformational leadership and transactional leadership. Transformational leadership focuses on giving workers a vision of what they should be striving to achieve, motivating them to want to achieve that goal, demonstrating individualized attention when needed, and providing workers with a rationale or intellectual reason for why doing this will improve them (Warrick, 2011). Transactional leadership focuses more on rewarding employees for achieving a goal—i.e., there is a transaction or incentive that is offered: a leader will provide a prize, so to speak, for every worker who accomplishes a specific task or transitions to a new platform, etc (Barbuto, 2005). Transformational leadership contains aspects of servant leadership in the sense that the transformational leader is willing and able to provide individualized attention to workers to help them address their specific needs, which is the essence of servant leadership. It also supplies a great deal more in terms of modeling the type of behavior that the worker is meant to follow and emulate. Transactional leadership is less like servant leadership in that it merely focuses on rewarding good behavior, but that too shares a similarity with servant leadership in that the goal is the same—to get workers to embrace good habits and become better workers.
Leaders can implement the servant model by listening, hearing, helping and supporting their workers. Transformational leaders can implement their model by communicating a clear vision of what the worker should strive to be, show the worker how to get there, support the worker in his needs, and give the worker a rationale that is logical for why the change should take place. The transactional leader can implement his model by defining the behavior that is expected of the worker and then rewarding that behavior with a specific reward. The participative model of leadership, which is my own, fits with these in the sense that the leader can invite workers to give their input on decisions, listen to their opinions and then formulate a decision or plan of action that takes their points of view into consideration. The vision of change is achieved by all workers coming together to give their perspectives and the vision emerges from that effort. The motivation to change is given by the sense of ownership that the workers take in knowing that they are helping to lead the organization forward. As Tobias (2015) notes, leaders fail when they fail to motivate, and they fail to motivate when they fail to consider the needs of their workers.
Each of these models can be effective in bringing about change in an organization but the most effective will be the transformational and the participative because they both capture the essence of servant leadership best. By putting the worker first, the organization identifies exactly what it is that makes it successful—the people. The people in turn will feel appreciated and supported and they will work to pass that respect and appreciation onto the client—the patient; and the patient thereby will receive the quality care that is needed. Transactional leadership can also help bring about change by rewarding good behavior. Each is effective, just in different ways, and each will be more or less effective depending on the type of crew that is requiring the change. No style is one size fits all; the leader, rather, should select the style that will be most appropriate for the group.
Part Two
My personal model of leadership works in conjunction with my leadership style by uniting the practical approach of leadership with the theory of leadership that I am most comfortable with. My model is based on the idea of developing workers professionally by getting them to be more engaged in the decision-making process and thereby facilitating their sense of ownership in the organization. My leadership style which is based on the theory of servant leadership integrates this participative approach by allowing me to acknowledge the needs of my workers, hear them, listen to them, accept them and then craft my response accordingly so that they can feel supported and heard.
An action plan using SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant, and Timely) with an evaluation of personal development to work on two areas of personal improvement for your leadership style is the following:
S—1) listen more effectively to my workers during meetings by taking notes of what they say and what they need; and 2) implement workers’ concerns more effectively by incorporating their concerns into policy decisions as they are made.
M—the goals are measurable view survey method: I can survey my workers to assess whether they feel their leader is listening to their input and incorporating their concerns into policy decisions.
A—the goals are actionable in the sense that I can implement them immediately and measure my development over the course of a specific set amount of time.
R—the goals are relevant because they affect my team and my ability to be a good servant leader who listens to what others have to say and is able to support their needs by acknowledging them and developing policies and decisions that will benefit them specifically.
T—the plan is timely in that this process can be conducted quickly in the matter of weeks and would be of benefit to the organization now as it would improve morale and increase a sense of responsibility.
To evaluate my personal development and improvement of my leadership style, I would survey my workers to see how well they feel I am listening to them and applying their opinions to the decision-making process. The survey method would allow me to obtain their input on my actions and I could use that feedback to reflect on my own experiences as a leader. Reflection is critical to personal and professional development and I would use their feedback on my performance to assess what I am doing right and what I am doing wrong and where my practice can use more development overall as a servant leader.
References
Barbuto Jr, J. E. (2005). Motivation and transactional, charismatic, and transformational
leadership: A test of antecedents. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 11(4), 26-40.
Cacamis, M. E., & El Asmar, M. (2014). Improving project performance through
partnering and emotional intelligence. Practice Periodical on Structural Design & Construction, 19(1), 50-56.
Russell, R. F., & Gregory Stone, A. (2002). A review of servant leadership attributes:
Developing a practical model. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 23(3), 145-157.
Tobias, R. M. (2015). Why do so many organizational change efforts fail?. Public
Manager, 44(1), 35.
Warrick, D. D. (2011). The urgent need for skilled transformational leaders: Integrating
transformational leadership and organization development. Journal of Leadership, Accountability and Ethics, 8(5), 11-26.