Examples of shared leadership in nursing include:
● Self-directed work teams. Work groups manage their own planning, organizing, schedul- ing, and day-to-day work activities.
● Shared governance. The nursing staff are formally organized at the service area and orga- nizational levels to make key decisions about clinical practice standards, quality assurance
44 PART 1 • UNDERSTANDING NURSING MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATIONS
and improvement, staff development, professional development, aspects of unit opera- tions, and research. Decision making is conducted by representatives of the nursing staff who have been authorized by the administrative hierarchy and their colleagues to make decisions about important matters.
● Co-leadership. Two people work together to execute a leadership role. This kind of lead- ership has become more common in service-line management, where the skills of both a clinical and an administrative leader are needed to successfully direct the operations of a multidisciplinary service. For example, a nurse manager provides administrative leader- ship in collaboration with a clinical nurse specialist, who provides clinical leadership. The development of co-leadership roles depends on the flexibility and maturity of both indi- viduals, and such arrangements usually require a third party to provide ongoing consulta- tion and guidance to the pair.
Servant Leadership Founded by Robert Greenleaf (Greenleaf, 1991), servant leadership is based on the premise that leadership originates from a desire to serve and that in the course of serving, one may be called to lead (Keith, 2008; The Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership, 2011). Servant leaders embody three characteristics:
● Empathy ● Awareness ● Persuasion (Neill & Saunders, 2008)
Servant leadership appeals to nurses for two reasons. First, our profession is founded on principles of caring, service, and the growth and health of others (Anderson et al., 2010). Sec- ond, nurses serve many constituencies, often quite selflessly, and consequently bring about change in individuals, systems, and organizations.
Emotional Leadership Social intelligence (Goleman, 2007), including emotional intelligence (Bradberry & Greaves, 2009; Goleman, 2006), has gained acceptance in the business world and more recently in health care (Veronsesi, 2009). Emotional intelligence involves personal competence, which includes self-awareness and self-management, and social competence, which includes social awareness and relationship management that begins with authenticity. (See Table 4-1.)
Goleman (2007) asserts that attachment to others is an innate trait of human beings. Thus, emotions are “catching.” Consider a person having a pleasant day. Then an otherwise innocuous event turns into a negative experience that spills over into future interactions. Or the reverse. A positive experience lightens the mood and affects the next encounter. When people feel good, they work more effectively.
Emotional intelligence has been linked with leadership (Antonakis, Ashkanasy, & Dasbor- ough, 2009; Cote et al., 2010; Lucas, Spence-Laschinger, & Wong, 2008). One study, however, found no relationship between emotional intelligence and transformational leadership (Linde- baum & Cartwright, 2010).
Nurses, with their well-honed skills as compassionate caregivers, are aptly suited to this direction in leadership that emphasizes emotions and relationships with others as a primary at- tribute for success. These skills fit better with the more contemporary relationship-oriented theo- ries as well. Thus, the workplace is a more complex and intricate environment than previously suggested. The following chapters show you how to put these skills to work.
Health care environments require innovations in care delivery and therefore innovative lead- ership approaches. Quantum, transactional, transformational, shared, servant, and emotional leadership make up a new generation of leadership styles that have emerged in response to the need to humanize working environments and improve organizational performance. In practice, leaders tap a variety of styles culled from diverse leadership theories.