Leadership effectiveness through emotional and social intelligence in nursing

¶ … Leadership Means to Me

Leadership is an important part of any organization and a workplace culture depends upon a type of leadership that is supportive of the aims within the workplace. There are many styles of leadership that can be effective depending up the goals that the organization has for itself. For me leadership means identifying what the organization and the employees need and then supplying that. If it indicates that as a leader you must adopt a new style of leadership, so be it. Leadership is about making adaptations and adjustments in order to address issues.

For example, some styles of leadership that can be important and effective in nursing can be servant leadership styles, transformational leadership, and democratic leadership. Each of these styles has its own special advantages -- but the point of having a truly positive style of leadership is that it helps boost everything in the workplace, from morale to goals to ability to achieve them. As Schyns and Schilling (2013) notes, bad leaders have a tremendously negative impact on workers: they cause bad attitudes to be formed, resentment to be cultivated, lethargy to enter into the environment, and even such ill-will as deliberate sabotage to become an issue. The purpose of the study by Schyns and Schilling (2013) is to show that good leadership is an essential part of organizational success.

To understand what good leadership means, it is helpful to appreciate some of the skills that are commonly seen among various leadership styles -- skills such as emotional intelligence (EI) and social intelligence (SI). As Sanchez-Nunez, Patti, and Holzer (2015) indicate, leadership policies are greatly bolstered by social and emotional intelligence competencies in organizationsl. Ealias and George (2012) also indicate that there is a significant correlation between emotional intelligence and job satisfaction, meaning that when EI and SI are present in the workplace, workers are more inclined to like their jobs, be happy and be efficient.

The reason for this is that EI and SI skills enable people to communicate better, understand one another, and use emotions strategically so that negative feelings are circumvented and positive feelings are reinforced. From a leadership perspective, this kind of understanding of how to interact with people on a social and emotional level is very important to fueling success and generating positivity in the workplace environment. In nursing, such skills can be very helpful in reducing the amount of stress that nurses feel -- such as fatigue and burnout. Leaders who understand the emotions that nurses experience when on duty and the social reality that they experience both in and outside of work can more effectively apply transformational principles or employ servant leadership styles to achieve organizational aims.