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Leadership in advanced practice Nursing

Leadership in advanced practice Nursing

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Leadership in advanced practice Nursing

Leadership in advanced practice Nursing

Introduction

One of the most important pillars for an effective nursing workforce and health system is

leadership and management. Good leadership plays a crucial role in creating a conducive

environment to maintain the high level of standard required for professional practice. Good

leadership is also a contributing factor in ensuring that nurses maintain their professional work

ethics in providing care to the patients, maintaining good working relationships with colleagues

and employers. Due the importance of good leadership in the nursing profession, nursing leaders

are required to learn crucial leadership skills to enable them perform their mandates effectively.

This essay is an analysis of these crucial skills that are essential for advanced practice nursing

that include emotional intelligence and authentic leadership skills.

Assessing emotional intelligence

Emotional intelligence is one of the skills that every nursing leader should possess. It

plays a crucial role in creating a good working environment for nurses as well as inspiring

relationships between colleges which are key mandates of a leader.(Akerjordet and Severinssson,

2008). Leaders who demonstrate emotionally intelligent characteristics perform better in

organizing nursing staff to achieve a better patient service. The main components of emotional

intelligence include ability to perceived emotions, accomplishing various tasks or activities

through applying the perceived emotions, understanding various variations in emotions and

managing these emotions to achieve the desired goals. (Bradberry & Greaves, 2009).

As a leader, my strength emotional skill is social awareness, however, in every strength,

there are also weaknesses. I have identified self-management as one of my greatest weakness.
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Leadership in advanced practice Nursing

Social awareness is a foundational skill as it enhances the ability to relate with other people

emotions (Jeong, H. 2015). Handling the emotions of others is one of the challenges that every

leaders must encounter and having social awareness as one of my strength is of significance in

my profession as an advanced practice nurse. Some of the aspects of social awareness that have

been of assistance to me are the ability listening and observing to learn from others. Majority of

the leaders have challenges in their leadership styles because they lack such a crucial skill that

enables a leader to interact with others.

Authentic leadership

Several leadership styles are applied in advanced nursing profession. These include

authentic leadership, transactional leadership and transformational leadership. In

transformational leadership, the focus is between the leaders and their followers (Shirley, 2009).

Transformational leaders are motivated on the priority and significance of the current goals and

mainly emphasize on group performance in encouraging every member to perform his role and

achieve his/her full potential. Transactional leadership is also referred to as managerial type of

leadership. The main priority of the leaders is to effect compliance of the members or subjects to

the rules by the use of reward and punishments. In authentic leaderships, leaders struggle to build

effective relationships with their followers that are based on honesty and ethics. Authentic

leaders practice openness and self-trust in maintaining the foundation with their followers.

Authentic leadership is an essential leadership skill that enables leaders to enhance their

psychological capacities while promoting their self-awareness (Klenke, K.2007). This makes it

an important asset for an advanced nursing practice career as a potential leader in the future. I

chose of the authentic type of leadership because of some of its characteristics that define

authentic leadership include a true to self-conformation concerning what others are expecting.
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Leadership in advanced practice Nursing

Authentic leadership characteristics also include being motivated based on personal convictions

as opposed to personal benefits. Others include the leadership point of view is based on personal

values. Authentic leaders are confident and full of hope. The skills are crucial in advanced

nursing practice because it helps leaders develop a positive solution that is always required in

navigating complex health care systems.

Definition of leadership

There are varied definition on leadership depending on profession and career. In

advanced nursing practice, leadership is the ability to influence others with an aim of achieving

specific set goals (Kornmiewicz,2015). Leadership aims to organizing people to accomplish

these goals in either groups or individuals. Leaders have different leadership styles that they use

to maintain such influence that can be authentic, transformational or managerial leadership.

Nursing leadership is different from other types of general leadership because it seeks to

influence others to achieve a safe and good working environment (Curtis et al, 2011).

Summary

In advanced nursing practice, leadership skills are crucial in maintaining a safe working

environment for nurses. Emotional intelligence and authentic leaders are some of the crucial

leadership skills that every potential nursing leaders should demonstrate. Nurse should embrace

authentic type of leadership that seeks openness, honest and put the personal convictions ahead

of personal benefits. This is because leadership in advanced nursing practice is different from

other general types of leadership. Although leadership is a talent that not every person possesses,

those given the responsibility should act with ethic to uphold the standard of nursing to higher

standards. As a potential leader, I embrace self-awareness as my strength in achieving the greater

visions of my career in future.

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Leadership in advanced practice Nursing

References

AKERJORDET, K., & SEVERINSSON, E. (2008). Emotionally intelligent nurse leadership: a

literature review study. J Nurs Manag, 16(5), 565-577. doi:10.1111/j.1365-

2834.2008.00893.x

Bradberry, T., & Greaves, J. (2009). Emotional intelligence 2.0.

Curtis, E. A., de Vries, J., & Sheerin, F. K. (2011). Developing leadership in nursing: exploring

core factors. British Journal of Nursing, 20(5), 306.

Jeong, H. (2015). Clinical Practice Stress, Emotional Labor, and Emotional Intelligence among

Nursing Students. doi:10.14257/astl.2015.103.9

Klenke, K. (2007). Authentic leadership: a self, leader, and spiritual identity

perspective. International Journal of Leadership Studies, 3(1), 68-97.

Kornmiewicz(2015)Nursing Leadership and Management: The Advanced Practice Role

Shirey, M. R. (2009). Authentic Leadership, Organizational Culture, and Healthy Work

Environments. Critical Care Nursing Quarterly, 32(3), 189-198.

doi:10.1097/cnq.0b013e3181ab91db