Analyzing Leadership Approaches for Nurses in Modern Healthcare

This essay critically analyzes leadership theories, styles, and challenges in the context of nursing within the current healthcare environment. It identifies the most suitable leadership approach for nurses, emphasizing the characteristics of an effective leader, relevant contemporary leadership models such as servant and democratic leadership, and provides an evidence-based rationale for the chosen leadership characteristics and models. The essay discusses the importance of traits like self-confidence, integrity, and sociability, and how servant leadership, with its focus on team strengths and patient needs, and democratic leadership, with its emphasis on inclusiveness and participation, can improve the value of care. Challenges in implementing these leadership styles are also addressed, highlighting the need for balance between achieving work goals and empowering staff members. The analysis concludes that these leadership approaches are vital for navigating the complexities of the modern healthcare system and improving patient outcomes.

Running Head: LEADERSHIP AND PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE
Leadership and Professional Practice

LEADERSHIP AND PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE 1
Current health care environment is considered to be unsustainable and broken. Highest quality
care is desired by the patients and therefore, the reduction in the costs is required. For the
purpose of regaining public trust, changes are needed in the health care system along with the
adaptation to the current requirements of the patients. However, challenges are created by the
different group of stakeholders in the health care system for the purpose of improving value of
care. The operative ways for refining the value of care can be best determined by the health care
providers. Moreover, the health care providers are required to learn the manner of leading the
patients effectively for the purpose of creating change (Hunter, 2016). This essay focuses on the
best leadership approach for a nurse in the current health care environment. It describes the
characteristics of an effective leader, leadership models for the health care environment and the
rationale for the leadership characteristics and the models chosen (Arroliga, Huber, Myers,
Dieckert and Wesson, 2014).
Certain characteristics are required to be possessed by the leaders in the current health
environment. An effective leader should be capable of making the recognition of the strengths
and weaknesses of the individuals in the team along with evaluating the level of effectiveness of
each individual. These traits are considered to be desirable and include self- confidence,
intelligence, integrity, determination and sociability. It is suggested that there is a relationship
between traits of leadership, patient outcomes and staff satisfaction (Zhang, Avery, Bergsteiner,
and More, 2014). One of the most important characteristics of an effective leader in nursing is
being a role model. This implies that the leader needs to initiate action, an exemplar, and should
present them as an example of how the actions should be performed. Further, another important
characteristic is to be an inspiration. Through this characteristic, the leaders should aim at
inspiring others with a goal and should make the followers see the desired endpoint to their
actions. Moreover, the leaders should possess the characteristic of empowerment which allows
them in getting other to work. They should also be capable of generating enthusiasm which is
considered to be a vital component i.e. getting other to work with passion (Gini and Green,
2014). An effective leader is also capable of establishing two- way communication with the staff
members. Effective nursing leader should also demonstrate skills and knowledge relating to all
aspects of the delivery of care. There should be complete understanding of the job descriptions
along with the responsibilities of employees. They should also possess knowledge regarding the
latest techniques along with the understanding of ethical and legal issues that confront the

LEADERSHIP AND PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE 2
practice of nursing. This can also be linked with the personality and trait leadership theory which
provides that the leaders are born with particular characteristics that allows them to lead others
and take the command (Spears and Lawrence, 2016).
The best leadership approach for nurses in the current health care environment is servant
leadership. Servant leadership is considered to be the best model due to the reason that it
emphasizes on the forte of the team, attending the requirements of the patients and developing
trusts. The nurses, as the servant leaders, may be best equipped for making the needed
modifications in the organization and in the patient- provider relationship for improving the
value of care for patient. The main emphasis of the servant nurse leader is on the success of the
team through the performance of the individual team members (Harden and Fulop, 2015). This
leadership approach has gained popularity over the past few years. In this style, the needs of the
team members are targeted by the leader while ensuring that they have the requisite
relationships, tasks and tools for achieving the individual and group goals. This style works in
the best possible manner when there are diverse members that work on different tasks with
different responsibilities. However, there are possibilities that this style doesn’t work well in
cases when the top decisions are required to be made or collective directions are to be followed
by the group (Gunnarsdóttir, Edwards and Dellve, 2018).
A nurse servant leader constantly makes the evaluation of the needs and requirements of his/ her
staff in order to help them in resolving their problems along with promoting personal
development. The servant leaders have the ability of providing the service which also regarded
as their primary motivator for the purpose of seeking a leadership role. The most important
characteristics of a servant leader are awareness, healing, empathy, listening, persuasion,
conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, building community, commitment to the growth of
people. The servant leadership is embraced by a number of nurses in the form of a philosophy
that offer the required guidance in their practice. This type of leadership is considered to be a
caring leadership that assists in building trust due to believe of the followers that the leader have
genuine concern for them. This psychological safety experienced by the employees results in
high level of employee engagement in the job. In this way, the servant leaders are capable of
building a healthy work environment along with attracting and retaining staff (Van Dierendonck,
Stam, Boersma, De Windt. and Alkema, 2014).

LEADERSHIP AND PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE 3
However, there are certain challenges faced while performing the role of a servant leader in the
health care environment. The nurses while undertaking servant leadership perform the task of
motivating and supporting good employee conduct and performance, literal service to the
employees goes against the integral business structures (Denis and van Gestel, 2016). Moreover,
another challenge is related to the lack of authority due to which they are unable to execute the
management of the health care organization. The servant leaders in nursing can push other
employees for performing better but is a challenging task for them to step back into this role as a
dominant figure (Kwon and Yang, 2016). They may also face the challenge of leading towards
demotivation of other employees which leads to the reduction of their productivity levels. Also,
there is a difference between the regular employees and the leaders by their role of providing
direction and developing vision. The servant leaders are required to be have some sort of
detachment from the employees for the purpose of exploring new opportunities, resolving
problems, brainstorming ideas, etc. Only this separation can assist the leaders in focusing on the
vision and providing directions to the employees. Other challenges faced by the leaders in the
health care environment include figuring out what needs to be done and making things happen
(Winston and Fields, 2015).
Another form of leadership that can prove to be useful is democratic leadership style. In the
context of nursing, the democratic leadership style will perform the function of enhancing the
participation of lower level employees in the process of decision making in the organization.
However, the final decision is taken the leader itself, still the leader collects feedback, ideas, and
information from all the members of the staff before coming to a conclusion. In nursing, the
democratic leadership style is considered to be effective due to the fact that all the employees are
given equal importance and value. This importance and value leads them to give their best efforts
for the achievement of the goals. It can be further linked with the relational theories which
recognize leadership in the form of a reciprocal interaction between the followers and the leaders
(Parés, Ospina and Subirats, 2017). The good leadership have the hallmark of being the
transformation of the followers who are committed to the vision of the leader. This leadership
style is best in the context of clinical settings as the abilities and skills of all he professional
make equal contribution towards the organizational success. However, there are some
disadvantages of adopting this leadership style in nursing as obtaining the feedback of each and
every individual is a time consuming process. Moreover, there are some confident group of

LEADERSHIP AND PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE 4
members who always give suggestions and stay ahead while the apprehensive employees do not
get the opportunities to offer their feedback.
Various authors have conducted studies for the purpose of finding evidences based rationale for
the leadership characteristics and models. It is essential that the strengths and weaknesses of the
every person is recognized by the effective leader. The listed characteristics of an effective
leader are difficult to be ranked due to the fact that all the identified characteristics are required
to be possessed by the good leader ideally (Connelly, 2016). Moreover, the idea of leadership is
fragmented if one leadership characteristic is considered to be more important than another. It is
essential that motivating and communication skills are possessed by the leaders in order to be
effective. Also, the ability to delegate the duties in an effective manner are required to be
possessed by the leaders along with the skills developed during their work tenure in the given
field and the knowledge regarding the duties performed by their employees. Moreover, the
leaders should be flexible, proactive, able to set objectives and good role models. Also, good
leaders should act in participative leadership with all the members of the staff at every level.
There are challenges faced on the continuous basis in the act of leading and therefore, the leaders
should achieve a balance between the accomplishment of the work goals and meeting of the
requirements of the staff members in feeling empowered with autonomy and valued for
addressing the needs of the patients. A complex series of functions are involved in the process of
being a leader for the purpose of guiding the physical resources and people towards positive
results for the facility, the individual and the patient (McKeown and Carey, 2015).
The democratic leadership style and the servant leadership model are appropriate for health care
environment. Servant leadership have the capability of saving the health care profession. His
model is associated with a number of favorable employee outcomes and involves favorable job
attitudes, better psychological well- being, improved job performance and reduced workplace
deviancy. In the form of the servant leaders, the health care nurses can be best prepared for
making changes in the organization and in the patient- provider relationship for improving the
value of care for patients (Denker, Sherman, Hutton- Woodland, Brunell and Medina, 2015). On
the other hand, democratic leadership style will make the use of democratic principles such as
inclusiveness, deliberation, self- determination and equal participation. This, in turn, will lead to
the empowerment of staff members, aid the process of group decision making and effective

LEADERSHIP AND PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE 5
delegation of responsibility. In other words, it will assist the leader in achieving the goals of the
health care organization by way of providing the needed direction to the members of the staff
(Antonakis and Day, 2017).
Therefore, it can be concluded that the current health care environment is unsustainable and
broken. Challenges are created by the different group of investors in the health care system for
the purpose of improving value of care. The operative ways for refining the value of care can be
best determined by the health care providers. Moreover, the health care providers are required to
learn the manner of leading the patients effectively for the purpose of creating change. An
effective leader should have self- confidence, intelligence, integrity, determination and
sociability. The best leadership approach for nurses in the current health care environment is
servant leadership. Democratic leadership style can also be used in the given context.

LEADERSHIP AND PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE 6
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