• E-mail
• Print
• RSS

Define and refine managers' leadership skills

Nurse Leader Weekly, May 27, 2005

Want to receive articles like this one in your inbox? Subscribe to Nurse Leader Weekly!

When Lori L. Wegner, BBA, MSA, PhD, spoke during the Emergency Nurses Association annual meeting in March, she challenged nurse leaders to take a look at their personal leadership styles. The exercise, she says, helps leaders better understand how they manage their staff and interact with more senior administrators.

During her presentation, "Leadership Style: Adjust Yours to Fit the Environment," Wegner-the president of Freeport, IL-based Wegner Consulting firm-outlined three styles. "What I recommend is to understand the different components of each leadership style," says Wegner. "Then adjust your style depending on who you're working with."

Wegner says most leaders are one of the following:

1. Transformational. Transformational leaders are influential, motivational, considerate, and provide opportunities for intellectual stimulation.
2. Transactional. These leaders are enforcers, offer contingent rewards, look for mistakes, and allow employees to perform at status quo.
3. Laissez-faire. Laissez-faire leaders do not offer any leadership. They avoid communication and do not offer motivation or feedback.

"Generally speaking," says Wegner, "leaders who fall within the transformational leadership style are the most effective." This is because people using this style are able to speak with more senior managers in terms that they will understand and about subjects they will appreciate. For instance, when speaking with their boss, a transformational leader will speak in terms of the hospital's mission, vision, and corporate objectives, leaving out talk that focuses on tasks and processes, which is transactional and may be more suitable for frontline staff.

Whichever leadership style managers choose to practice, Wegner suggests taking the audience into consideration. For example, supervisors who work more often with frontline staff must act as a transactional leader and focus on rewards and punishments rather than the main mission of the hospital.

Source: Adapted from Competency Management Advisor (May 2005), published by HCPro, Inc.

Want to receive articles like this one in your inbox? Subscribe to Nurse Leader Weekly!

• E-mail to a Colleague
• Print
• RSS
• Archive