Evaluating Leadership Theories in Practice- Comparing Emotional Intelligence and Transformational Leadership in Healthcare Settings

Evaluating Leadership Theories in Practice- Comparing Emotional Intelligence and Transformational Leadership in Healthcare Settings

For the quality provision of healthcare services, the nurses are required to work in a healthy working environment that is motivating. Nursing leadership and administrative roles directly impact the nursing staff’s motivation to serve. The key insights I got from the articles I selected included, first, that leaders have an essential role in creating a healthy working environment for the staff and, hence, determine the individual experiences of their staff (Saleh et al., 2018). Secondly, good leadership is associated with decreased burnout among the staff as the leaders empower and motivate their nurses rather than dictate them to do their roles (Tran et al., 2018). Transformational leaders, unlike transactional leaders, should motivate and inspire the employees to carry out their roles as expected.

Time last year, I witnessed a situation where the leadership skills and behaviours of the leaders created an ample working environment for their staff. Two trained nurse leaders made it difficult for a newly employed registered nurse. There were complaints that the two did not want to assist the newly employed nurse, and they would sit down all day to make stories rather than work. Instead of criticizing the two nurse aides, the nurse in charge of the unit called them together with the newly employed nurse to hear from them. The nurse in charge asked the two nurse aides to be kind to the new nurse and help him do his job appropriately. The nurse in charge went ahead to instruct the two nurse aides to be responsible for the activities in the ward and help guide the new nurse. The nurse was motivated to do his job and worked well with the two nurse aides a week later. In the illustrated situation, the nurse in charge applied remarkable leadership skills to solve the conflict. According to Wei et al. (2019), a leader should be a good listener and communicator. The nurse in charge listened to both parties and allowed the two nurse aides to recognize their mistakes rather than expelling them.

References

Saleh, U., O’Connor, T., Al-Subhi, H., Alkattan, R., Al-Harbi, S., & Patton, D. (2018). The impact of nurse managers’ leadership styles on ward staff. British journal of nursing, 27(4), 197-203. https://doi.org/10.12968/bjon.2018.27.4.197

Tran, K. T., Nguyen, P. V., Dang, T. T., & Ton, T. N. (2018). The impacts of the high-quality workplace relationships on job performance: A perspective on staff nurses in Vietnam. Behavioral Sciences, 8(12), 109. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs8120109

Wei, H., Roberts, P., Strickler, J., & Corbett, R. W. (2019). Nurse leaders’ strategies to foster nurse resilience. Journal of Nursing Management, 27(4), 681-687. https://doi.org/10.1111/