Leadership Styles in Nursing: Application in the Clinical Scenario

This essay delves into the multifaceted world of nursing leadership, emphasizing the inadequacy of relying on a single leadership style in complex clinical scenarios. It highlights the significance of clinical leadership in fostering positive patient outcomes and maintaining optimal functionality within healthcare organizations. The essay explores various leadership styles, including transformational, transactional, autocratic, and situational leadership, evaluating their applicability in different healthcare contexts. While transformational leadership is acknowledged for its motivational impact, the essay argues for the necessity of integrating other styles, such as transactional and situational leadership, to address diverse challenges, including crisis management and compliance. The concept of aesthetic leadership is introduced as a potential framework for clinical leaders to leverage their experience and knowledge in selecting the most appropriate leadership approach based on specific circumstances, thereby enhancing the overall effectiveness of healthcare delivery. Desklib provides a platform to access this and many other solved assignments for students.

Running head: NURSING LEADERSHIP ESSAY
Nursing leadership essay
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NURSING LEADERSHIP ESSAY
It can be argued that when clinical leadership is concerned, adhering to only one
leadership style will not be sufficient in clinical scenarios.
Nursing is one of the most compassionate and impactful professions that gives the
professional the opportunity to provide care and support to the sick and ailing. However, in order
to shine in the field of nursing or health care, there is a need for a few professional attributes
such as critical thinking and clinical leadership (Bathurst, Jackson & Statler, 2010). Clinical
leadership is associated with clinical reasoning and decision making. There are many challenging
situations involved with the clinical scenario where the nurse is required to make critical
decisions that are fundamentally associated with the safety and well-being of the patient. Hence,
there is a need for more contemporary and multidimensional leadership approaches (Beydler,
2017). This essay will explore the different leadership styles to find the most suitable approach
that can be aligned with the complex leadership needs of clinical scenario.
First and foremost, it is very important to align the different ideas and understanding of
the concept of clinical leadership and how it relates to the key clinical scenarios. Clinical
leadership can be considered as one of the key concepts that facilitate positive and optimal client
or patient outcomes across different clinical settings (Cameron et al., 2012). It has to be
understood that in any organizational scenario, the only way to maintain optimal functionality
while meeting the quality benchmarks of the performance is having a sound leadership
framework, and the healthcare scenario is not an exception to that either. This is where the
congruent concept of clinical leadership comes from, and it not only guides the nurses to their
utmost performance outcomes but it also helps them understand their role and responsibility with
clarity. According to Mannix, Wilkes and Daly (2015), it has to be mentioned that in the clinical
scenario, the concept of multidisciplinary care is very popular. In multidisciplinary care, there

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are different care professionals involved belonging to different care backgrounds to address the
different needs of the patient, however, the efficiency and effectiveness of the care depend on the
co-operative harmony of the varied range of different care professionals (Carlos Do Rego
Furtado, Da Graça Câmara Batista & José Ferreira Silva, 2011). The concept of clinical
leadership comes to aid in this scenario as well providing a framework of guidance and
management that will address any conflict that arises and will provide the best care outcome to
the patients. On a more elaborative note, the clinical leadership in the healthcare scenario
provides system performance, achievement of health reform objectives, timely care delivery,
system integrity, and efficiency. Hence, clinical leadership is one of the greatest operational
needs of the contemporary health care scenarios to ensure optimal productivity and performance
(Swanwick & McKimm, 2011).
Now there are various different leadership styles and approaches, and each one of them
has a significant use and impact on the functionality of the organizational construct.
Transformational leadership is the leadership style of the millennium; it provides the most
benefit to the organization. The transformation leadership is the leadership of change; here the
leader attempts to portray as a role model in order to have the followers be motivated by the
vision and mission of change brought forward by the leader. According to Doody and Doody
(2012), in transformational leadership, the leader attempts to motivate and inspire the followers
to see and feel the need for the change in the scenario and work towards facilitating the change
along with the leader. In clinical leadership scenario as well, the most notable leadership
approach that has been discovered is the transformational leadership. It has to be mentioned in
this context that the professional development is the sector that requires the most of the
leadership attributes in the healthcare scenario. And hence, the transformational leadership style

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has been the most utilized leadership style in the healthcare, other than the rest of the leadership
styles (Daly et al., 2014). Considering the other leadership styles that can be aligned with the
healthcare scenario is the transactional, autocratic and situational leadership styles. Although, it
has to be mentioned these leadership styles have not been very prominently observed in the
healthcare scenario (Hutchinson & Jackson, 2013).
Elaborating more, autocratic leadership is the leadership approach where the leader does
not share the decisive power with the subordinates in any manner and is only concerned with
results rather than the impact on the followers (Doody & Doody, 2012). This leadership style is
emotionless and devoid of any compassion, hence it cannot be implemented in all healthcare
scenarios. Health care is a profession that is based on delivering care that is compassionate and
empathetic, hence a leader with no compassion to guide the professions providing care or
establishing care skills will not lead to positive outcomes. Transactional leadership, on the other
hand, is reward and punishment based leadership style (Giltinane, 2013). In this case, the
leadership approach is a based on a leader that attempts to attain compliance on the basis of both
rewards and punishments. Although, this leadership style lacks compassionate approach as well,
it has to be mentioned that this leadership style can be beneficial to the healthcare scenario to
some extent. Nursing burnout is one of the greatest contributing factors behind the different
medical errors and often the workload is the driving factors behind many prospering nursing
candidates resigning leading to higher staffing shortage in the clinical scenario. Higher
remuneration or incentives for extra initiatives taken or extra hours worked per employee can be
a motivational factor for them to continue despite extreme workload. Similarly, for
noncompliance with different protocols like infection control and hand hygiene, punishments can
help the clinical leader attain better commitment. On the other hand, the situational leadership is

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another very effective leadership technique that can help the clinical leaders handle critical and
emergency situations. In this leadership style developed by the Kenneth Blanchard and Paul
Hersey, the leader has to change his leadership style based on the need of the situation
(Dumdum, Lowe & Avolio, 2013). It has to be understood that in health care crisis situation, the
life of an individual lies in the hands of care providers. In such a situation a single mistake can
cost the patient his or her life, hence, the need for quick thinking and fast decision making
combined with co-operative harmony is required (Dumdum, Lowe & Avolio, 2013). In such
cases, the situational decision making can serve as the most suitable leadership style in the
clinical leadership context.
Hence, it can be undoubtedly stated that the clinical leadership scenario is not just limited
to professional development; there can be an emergency crisis or the need for compliance and
organizational commitment to deliver the best possible support and care to the patients
(Giltinane, 2013). Hence only transformational leadership will not suffice to handle the different
needs of the clinical leadership scenarios. There is a need for transactional leadership and
situational leadership to address the different demands of the different crises of the health care at
times as well. However, the transition from one leadership style to another can be difficult for the
professional in the role of clinical leader. It has to be understood that these leadership styles can
be very overlapping and there is a need for a sound framework that will align all the mentioned
leadership styles for the applicative benefits of the clinical leaders (Carlos Do Rego Furtado et
al., 2011). The concept of aesthetic leadership that is based on tactic knowledge and aesthetic
knowing can provide the best possible solution. This leadership style defies neither the
transformational nor other congruent leadership styles, on the other hand, it provides the clinical
leader with the opportunity to decide based on experience, regarding which leadership model to

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follow under different circumstances (Mannix, Wilkes & Daly, 2015). However, Hutchinson and
Jackson (2013), have argued that knowledge, especially in the clinical scenario, is formed
transformed and transferred through interactions and connections. Furthermore, it can also be
argued that health care is based on science and aesthetic leadership depends more on silent
knowledge than logical explanations (Swanwick & McKimm, 2011). According to Beydler
(2017), aesthetic leadership depends on awareness and knowledge that has been gained by
embodied experiences. As the relevance and importance of aesthetics, emotion and art has been
established in the nursing care, aesthetic leadership can easily be considered the best solution for
clinical leaders allowing them to choose the most suitable leadership style based on their
knowledge, experience and the demand of the situation (Cameron et al., 2012).
On a concluding note, it can be stated in the modern-day organizational scenario, the
need for sound leadership is imperative. However, adhering to only a single leadership style or
approach will not meet the multidimensional needs of the modern day organizations. Especially,
the clinical scenario, adhering to only one leadership style will not suffice with the rising
demands of this public service sector. This essay has illustrated the need for a contemporary
leadership framework that will combine the benefits of different leadership styles so that they
can be employed in different situations. Aesthetic leadership style, as discussed, can be the best
possible solution in the clinical leadership scenario, so that the clinical leader has the liberty to
choose the leadership style most fit for the situation based on their knowledge and experience.

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References:
Bathurst, R., Jackson, B., & Statler, M. (2010). Leading aesthetically in uncertain
times. Leadership, 6(3), 311-330.
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