The Impact of Emotional Intelligence on Nursing Leadership

This assignment provides an overview of the importance of emotional intelligence in nursing leadership, highlighting its effects on job stress and collaborative behaviors. It analyzes recent studies and publications to demonstrate the significance of emotional intelligence in nursing management, suggesting that it is a crucial aspect for effective leadership.

Running head: IMPORTANCE OF EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE IN NURSING
Leadership and Management Concepts for Health Professionals NRS3222
Maitha Bader NaseerAlnaqbi
FC1300033
Semester 2/ 2017-2018
Importance of emotional intelligence in nursing
Word count 1526

1IMPORTANCE OF EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE IN NURSING
Introduction
Nursing have an important role in the healthcare industry, and emotional intelligence
helps nurses in managing the healthcare unit, which reduces the stress for leaders and managers.
Nurses provide holistic care for the patient without judging their gender, religion, culture
(Hoeve, Jansen &Roodbol, 2013).Emotional Intelligence (EI) plays avital role for the nursing
staffs to deliver excellent quality health care services to the patient. Intelligence quotient was the
only parameter used to indicate the success of the individual, but now the emotional intelligence
is also considered as one of the vital parameters in the nursing department (Aradilla-Herrero,
Tomás-Sábado & Gómez-Benito, 2013). A high level of EI indicates that a nurse is highly
capable of managing and controlling his/her emotions as well as the emotion of others. This will
increase the safety of the patient and build a good relationship with others. Leadership and
management have also become a part of nursing as it will help the nurses to manage and improve
the medical ward and provide a healthy environment for the patients and staffs (Kim, 2014).
This paper discusses the emotional intelligence, the importance of emotional intelligence in
leadership, managerial period relationship, theimpact of EI on nursing staffs and the
consequences of not having proper emotional intelligence. This paper also contains some
recommendations how emotional intelligence can be used for developing managerial skills and
nursing leaders by which the medical unit can get a healthy and a positive environment.
Leadership andEmotional intelligence
The ability of an individual to control one’s own emotion as well as controlling someone
else’s emotion to differentiate people and using this information to guide actions is known as
Emotional Intelligence (Goleman, Boyatzis & McKee, 2013). Emotional intelligence has
threecompetencies that can be categorised into Self-awareness, self-management and social
competence.Social competency includes relationship management and social awareness
(Sullivan, 2013). Social awareness means identifying personal emotions and expressing those
emotions accordingly. People having high social awareness are very sensitive and can predict
other’s emotion (Guillen &Florent-Treaacy, 2011). Self-management means controlling the
sentimentto buildan environment that makes the group or team feel motivated, regarded, happy

2IMPORTANCE OF EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE IN NURSING
and increase self-esteem. Social competency defines the understanding of others emotion and
response to particular environmental stimuli.
Emotional intelligence will affect the healthcare positively and will increase the productivity by
creating a trusting and appropriate environment (Guillen &Florent-Treacy, 2011). Emotional
intelligence helps in increasing the leadership quality of the staffs by helping them to understand
the emotions of the staffs and motivating them, which improves the staff involvement and their
productivity.
Leadership is defined as someone’s ability to influence someone by using interpersonal
skills to achieve a specific goal (Sullivan, 2013). The two most essential leadership styles are
transactional and transformational style. Transactional leaders are those who value the structure
of the organisation and the orders. Emotional intelligence needs someone who can follow the
orders and can maintain the structure of the organisation. Transformational leaders are those who
work with the subordinates to recognise or identify the key changes needed in the organisation.
Emotional intelligence is effective when the leader will work with their subordinate to
understand the problem the patients or the staffs are facing (Dumdum, Lowe and Avolio, 2013).
Models of Emotional Intelligence
Emotional Intelligence has two models:
Ability model
Mayer, Caruso and Salovey (Sadri, 2012) developed this model of Emotional
Intelligence. This model has four levels. The top most level is perceived, the second level is
using, the third level is understanding, and the last level is managing emotions.The first level of
ability model is defined as the ability to perceive or understand theemotionof someone by
recognising the expressions and interpreting those expressions. Next level focuses on using or
understanding the emotions to develop thoughts and examining how an individual will react
when two different emotions are put against each other. The third level refers to understanding
those reactions or emotions. The last level defines the capability to manage the emotion of the
staffs. It defines the potential to manage conflicts or reducing someone’s anxiety (Sadri, 2012).
Goleman Model

3IMPORTANCE OF EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE IN NURSING
Goleman model explains EI as the ability to motivate someone who is frustrated. It is a
model of EI, which consists of five different types of skills, which is categorised into social skills
and personal skills. Personal skills include self-awareness, motivation and self-regulation. Social
competency includes empathy, and social skill means the understanding of other’s
feelings(Sadri, 2012). Self-awareness refers to understanding what an individual is feeling and
knowinghow the moods have effects on others. Self-regulation is redirecting or controlling
someone’s emotions and anticipating the consequences. Motivation means utilising the
emotional factors to achieve organisational goals. Empathy refers to sensing orunderstanding the
emotions of others. Social skills denote managing the relationship between the staffs, motivating
and inspiring others.
Impact of EI on Nursing Leadership
Author Guillen &Florent-Treacy (2011) explains self-awareness as one of the
vitalcomponents in EI competencies. Self-awareness may not positivelyaffect the nursing
leaderdirectly, but it will surely help the nursing leader to identify and deal with the emotion of
the staff, which will help in motivating the workers of the team (Guillen &Florent-Treacy, 2011).
As a result, it will decrease the rate of burnouts; increase the performance of the team, it will
improve the communication between the staffs. Researchers have shown that higher emotional
intelligence resulted in higher productivity and a positive working environment
(Codier&Muneno, 2013; Afolabi, Awosola&Omole, 2010).Emotional intelligence also helped in
stress reduction (Tyczkowski et al., 2015).EI is interconnected with the transformational
style of leadership and has increased the performance of the team (Sadri, 2012).
Importance of EI in nursing leadership
EI improves the quality of management in the health unit. Leadership quality for nursing
has increased due to the increased level of nursing shortages. EI is important for retaining the
nurses by improving the job satisfaction (Feather, 2009). Decreasing the job complexity will
improve the work satisfaction among the nurses’, and it will help in delivering quality health care
and a healthy environment (Feather, 2009). According to some researchers like Clancy(2014),
managers with high emotional intelligence will obtain a high rate of retaining staff, optimal
organisational outcome, better patient satisfaction and will reduce bullying.Emotional
intelligence also helps in preventing and resolving the conflicts by using dialogue so that both

4IMPORTANCE OF EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE IN NURSING
parts can speak, attentive listening and helps in avoidingprejudice. It will also help the leaders to
motivate the staffs to get a solution, which will satisfy both the parties (McGrath, 2013).
Managerial Pyramid and Emotional Intelligence
The managerial pyramid consists of three different levels they are as follows:
Strategic level
Tactical level
Operational level (Sullivan, 2013)
The first level of the managerial pyramid is strategic level, whichneeds a lot of
knowledge than tactical and operational level. Operational level requires technical
skill.Communication is common in all the levels of the managerial pyramid. ANOE
fivecompetencies explainthat a manager should be capable in all the levels of
communication, professionalism, healthcare knowledge, leadership skills and skill of
business (Sullivan, 2013). It has been proved that employees are leaving jobs due to lack of
leadership skill, which indicates that emotional intelligence is highly required for the
managers (Feather, 2009).
Consequences of poor or lacked emotional intelligence
Poor or lack of emotional intelligence presence affects the team as well as the leader.
Poor emotional intelligence may not affect the production directly but it may affect the staff
motivation and it may reduce their productivity. Lack of emotional intelligence will decrease
the tolerance level for stress and eventually increase the rate of burnouts (Landa&Leopez-
Zafra, 2010). The low emotional intelligence of the leader will affect the productivity, which
will result in low employee commitment, increase layoffs and increases the job insecurity
(Afolabi, Awosola&Omele, 2010).
Recommendations for future
Gillen &Florent in 2011 has suggested the use of self-awareness program. According to
Gillen &Florent(2011), the self-awareness program will make them self-aware so that they
can understand the position they are standing. Apart from this employee testing is necessary

5IMPORTANCE OF EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE IN NURSING
to aware the nurses what their capabilities are. Research has shown that out of 33 participants
only 57% of nurses can use their emotional intelligence or capable of using their emotional
intelligence (Codier&Muneno, 2013). Moreover, many researchers also conclude that
providing frequent constructive feedback, support withperformance appraisal and educational
session and leadership quality development programme can improve the emotional
intelligence (Tyckowski et al., 2015; Sadri, 2012). Nursing areas lackthe researching of the
studies, which shows the effect of possessing emotional intelligence. However,there have
been attempts of using emotional intelligence and the result signifies the growth in the
employee’s production and the outcomes also increases (Rankin, 2013; Feather, 2009;
Michelangelo, 2015).
Conclusion
EI is an importantaspect of the health industry. It is an essential aspect because it helps
the managers and leaders to manage the emotions of their employee. Emotional intelligence also
helps the leaders and managers to motivate the employee or staffs which results in improved
outcomes and better productivity. Emotional Intelligence is vital in nursing as it helps to deliver
a high quality standard of care to the patients to satisfy them. It also increases the productivity of
the organization and staffs satisfaction, which reduces the percentage of burnouts, and increases
or improve work outcomes. Lack of emotional intelligence or poor EI has an adverse effect on
the healthcare unit as well as to theleader, which decreases the employee retention. It also
reduces the ability of the staff to handle pressure or stress. Ultimately, it results in increases the
job insecurity among the staffs and reduces their productivity.

6IMPORTANCE OF EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE IN NURSING
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