Philosophy of Nursing Leadership
I chose the nursing profession because of my strong desire to assist those in need. Whenever I see a person suffering, am moved to help him or her from their suffering situation. My longing desire to pursue a nursing career was to help vulnerable and underserved populations. I aspired to a career where I would be in a position to use my abilities and skills to achieve gratifying and rewarding outcomes. The nursing profession offers a broad range of daily experiences as well as life opportunities. My philosophy is the nursing career is to provide competent and patient-centered care to my patients irrespective of their socioeconomic status, culture, rage, age, or gender as outlined in the nursing code of ethics. I would also like to impact transformational leadership throughout my nursing practice. This paper seeks to explore transformational leadership theory which aligns with my philosophy in nursing, a reflection of how I have grown throughout my nursing career, how my leadership philosophy has evolved throughout my nursing career, and how I envision myself as a leader in the future.
Transformational Leadership Theory
Transformational leadership is a theory of leadership that impacts change in social systems and individuals. In its ideal form, transformational leadership results in positive and valuable changes with the ultimate goal of inspiring followers into future leaders (Fischer, 2016). Transformational leadership improves the performance, motivation, and morale of followers when enacted in its authentic form. Transformational leadership entails inspiring followers in a variety of machines including understanding the strengths and weaknesses of followers; challenging members of the team to take greater ownership for their work; being a role model for followers with an aim of inspiring them, and connecting with the followers’ sense of self mission and identity and collective identity of the organization. As a leader, I align my team members with tasks that optimize their performance.
James MacGregor Burns introduced the concept of transformational leadership in 1978 in his descriptive research on political leaders (Ross et al. 2014). Burns argues that transformational leaders help each other to improve to a higher level of motivation. According to Burns, transformational leadership impacts important changes in the life of individuals and organizations. Transformational leadership changes the aspirations and expectations of employees and redesigns their values and perceptions. It is based on a leader’s ability, traits, and personality to make a change within an organization. Transformational leaders are idealized in the sense that they are role models of working with the aim of benefiting their group or organization. Burns theorized that transformational leadership is an exclusive style of organizational leadership.
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How Transformational Leadership aligns with my Philosophy in Nursing Leadership
Idealized Consideration
As a nurse leader, I attend to each of my follower’s needs and act as a mentor to the follower, and I listen to the follower’s needs concerns, and needs. I keep open communication with my followers, give empathy and support, and place challenges before them. I celebrate and respect the individual contribution that each follower makes to the team. As a result, I find my followers having intrinsic motivation for their tasks and strong will and aspirations for self-development.
Intellectual Stimulation
In my nursing practice, I take risks, challenge assumptions and solicit my followers’ ideas. Using this style of leadership, I encourage creativity in my followers. I encourage and nurture members of my team to think independently. As a leader, I consider learning value and I perceive unexpected situations as opportunities for learning. When my followers ask questions, I think deeply about their challenges and figure out better ways of addressing their concerns.
Inspirational Motivation
As a nurse leader, I strive to articulate a vision that is aspiring and appealing to my followers. I communicate hopefulness about future goals, challenge my followers with high standards, and provide meaning for the task at hand. If followers are to be motivated to act, they demand a strong sense of purpose. I employ communication skills that make the philosophy engaging, powerful and understandable, and precise. As a result, my followers are optimistic about the future and believe in their abilities, they feel encouraged and are willing to invest more in their abilities.
Idealized Influence
Weng et al. (2015) argue that the aspect of professional leadership provides instills pride, provides a role model for high ethical behavior and helps followers to gain trust and respect. I use transformational leadership as a development tool to encourage members of my team to provide individualized care and advocate for the patients.
Transformational leadership utilizes impression management and lends itself to good self-promotion by leaders. The current environment which is characterized by organizational instability, global turbulence, and uncertainty requires transformational leadership to prevailing at all levels of the organization. Transformational leaders’ followers demonstrate high levels of organizational commitment and job satisfaction and participate in organizational citizenship behaviors. Such a devoted workforce is useful in making efforts towards developing approaches to changing organizations through transformational leadership (Vaismoradi et al. 2016).
My growth throughout my Nursing Career
Throughout my nursing practice, I have professionally grown to be a skilled and competent nurse. I am a BSN nurse with twelve years of nursing experience. Throughout the four years I spent pursuing my baccalaureate degree, I developed critical thinking and reinforced my clinical knowledge. The baccalaureate course prepared me to become a competent practice nurse with strong ethical and moral values which are critical in making informed care decisions. The program offered me a holistic approach to clinical practice. I learned critical skills that form the basis of my nursing career.
The BSN program also prepared me to develop strong leadership skills which align with my philosophy of nursing. As a nurse leader, am duty-bound to provide a solution to problems rather than identifying problems without getting solutions. I have also learned some leadership skills from my seniors in the course of nursing practice. Throughout my nursing practice, I have reinforced my clinical and leadership skills, and this has helped me to deliver patient-centered care.
How my Leadership Philosophy has evolved throughout my Nursing Career
Nursing is a dynamic and challenging profession that calls for engaging and inspiring role models and leaders. The ever-changing and demanding environment has impacted my leadership philosophy throughout my nursing career. My leadership philosophy has evolved from being just being a leader to a transformational leader. Transformational leadership is strongly connected to employee behaviors and attitudes. Transformational leadership helps in making the working environment organizationally empower. Transformational leaders inspire their followers to participate in decision making and which nurtures knowledge and critical thinking and skill improvement. The attitude of transformational leaders is usually associated with great levels of worker satisfaction, the performance of an organization, and workers’ satisfaction. Transformational leadership enhances the quality of patient care by ensuring individual behaviors at the caring practice environment and organizational level. Transformational leaders win followers’ faith and trust and forestall their requirements through giving accessibility to authorizing factors such as resources, information, and support which are important for employees to complete their work in a better way (Ross et al. 2014).
How I envision myself as a Future Leader
Leadership skills should be acquired or learned. As a nurse practitioner, I look forward to reinforcing my nursing leadership skills. I am prepared to accept challenges because I believe more challenges create opportunities to acquire new knowledge. I anticipate that my future leadership will come with a huge responsibility in the course of my nursing profession. I am confident that I would be able to take responsibility and dealing with healthcare challenges as a future leader. I envision myself have reinforced my advocacy skills in providing care services to my patients.
How I will apply Transformational Leadership as a future leader
As a future leader, I will encourage my followers to be creative and innovative. I will encourage new ideas from my followers and never criticize them publicly for their mistakes. I will focus on the cause of the problem but not the blame part of it. If the followers find an old practice ineffective, they will have no hesitation in discarding it. Am also determined to act as mentors to my followers and reward them for their creative innovations. I will focus on treating my followers differently based on their knowledge and talents. I will empower them to make a decision and always provide the necessary support to implement their decisions.
References
Fischer, S. A. (2016). Transformational leadership in nursing: a concept analysis. Journal of advanced nursing, 72(11), 2644-2653.
Ross, E. J., Fitzpatrick, J. J., Click, E. R., Krouse, H. J., & Clavelle, J. T. (2014). Transformational leadership practices of nurse leaders in professional nursing associations. Journal of Nursing Administration, 44(4), 201-206.
Vaismoradi, M., Griffiths, P., Turunen, H., & Jordan, S. (2016). Transformational leadership in nursing and medication safety education: a discussion paper. Journal of nursing management, 24(7), 970-980.
Weng, R. H., Huang, C. Y., Chen, L. M., & Chang, L. Y. (2015). Exploring the impact of transformational leadership on nurse innovation behaviour: A cross‐sectional study. Journal of Nursing Management, 23(4), 427-439.
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