Emotional intelligence and democratic leadership in nursing unit management
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Nursing Leadership Styles
Analysis of Leadership Styles:
Assessment of RN Unit Manager Performance
The RN Unit Manager of the department I'm a member of blends autocratic and democratic styles, seeking to clearly define roles and tasks while also frequently working to get the entire department to take ownership of tasks. In evaluating her performance over the last few weeks, there have been more incidences of democratic leadership.
Which Characteristics I Will Integrate Into My Own Leadership Style
The RN Unit Manager is exceptional in her command of situations and she has a strong sense of how best to approach each to get the highest performance possible from the team. In this regard, she has demonstrated superior emotional intelligence (EI), a key component of democratic and transformational leadership (Sanders, Davidson, Price, 1996). She also is compassionate and helps the nurses who need more guidance to understand advanced procedures and how to get tasks accomplished. In this regard she shows transformational leadership skills (Lung, Braithwaite, 1992). All of these qualities I plan on emulating. The qualities I don't plan on emulating include her tendency to give nurses too much latitude in the quality of their performance over time; she needs to force greater accountability over performance for these nurses to improve. While she is a great leader, at times it appears she is too flexible, not demanding high enough performance for nurses to improve.
In conclusion, the RN Unit Manager makes solid contributions to the value of healthcare service provided and has had many patients recommend her for awards and promotions. She combined deep expertise in medical care, patient care, medical records management and a strong democratic leadership style. She does make the entire team more accountable for greater performance over time through example; however she could be more direct and ask for higher performance from nurses not performing at a high enough level over time. In the interest of a smoothly-functioning department she doesn't overtly demand continual performance gains from nurses struggling to achieve. That is my only criticism of this exceptional leader.
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- Lung, M., & Braithwaite, D. (1992). Management of change: A case study in nurse education. Health Manpower Management 18(2), 17.
- Sanders, B. H., Davidson, A. M., & Price, S. A. (1996). The unit nurse executive. Nursing Management, 27(1), 42.
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