Nursing Leadership Styles

Nurses play vital roles in health care organizations. How they are managed by their leaders can significantly affect their performance and influence patient outcomes. It is important to understand the different leadership styles that are found in the workplace, as well as their effects on the staff and those under their care. Here are some different nursing leadership styles.

      1.      Autocratic Leadership

The autocratic style of leadership involves a leader or nurse manager who makes all important decisions, gives orders, and issues directives to employees. Autocratic leaders discourage workers from questioning the validity of any directives. The autocratic style of leadership is appropriate for workplaces such as jails, prisons, the military, and any settings with routinized operations because, in these places, the lives of masses of people completely hinge on workers following very specific orders step by step.

      2.      Democratic leadership

In this style, nurse leaders include other nurses in the decision-making process during procedural changes. Clinical nurse leaders collect the ideas and opinions of their staff, and thentry to find practical ways to improve the quality of care that they are delivering. In order to maximize the effectiveness of democratic leadership, clinical nurse leaders should advise their staff to develop both professional and casual partnerships with one another. Rather than designating select members of the team to solve problems on their own, each available nurse should be offered an opportunity to participate by contributing their own individual expertise to clinical processes. But unlike transformational leadership, the democratic leadership style generally leaves final decisions up to the leader, restricting how extensively the group can impact decisions. This allows nurse leaders to maintain control over the decision-making process while still offering employees the chance to have their feedback acknowledged by their leaders.

      3.      Affiliative Leadership

Affiliative Leadership is based on harmony. With a focus on building positive relationships focused on trust and loyalty, an affiliative leader is often most useful in organizations suffering from low morale. This nursing leadership style is entirely emotional. Because of that, an affiliative leader may have to practice more results-minded traits when their initial work of alleviating stress and facilitating strong connections has completed.

      4.      Transformational

Transformational leadership style in nursing is based on the encouragement of the employees to give their best at work and motivation to be positive while performing various tasks instead of being negative. But, all this is done through mission and vision. Transformational style results in engaged and productive teams. To make this leadership work in a beneficial way for the organization, there is a requirement of an inspiring and smart nurse leader.

      5.      Visionary Leadership

The visionary style of leadership involves a charismatic leader who motivates people to pursue vision by providing guidance on where to go and what to do without the step-by-step directions. This leadership style pushes employees to action by encouraging them to take strides toward the overall goals of the organization. The typical visionary leader exchanges information freely to arm subordinates with the knowledge they will need to succeed.

      6.      Coaching

In coaching leadership, leader concentrates on the development of people. They work to make the team members understand their strengths and weaknesses, set targets for development and help them achieve goals. This nurse manager leadership style is great to groom the employees both professionally and personally. If implemented properly it gives long term results.

Studies continue to prove that relational types of nursing leadership styles result in a higher level of patient satisfaction. In other words, patients report that they are happier when nurses practice these styles. This reduces the need for restraint and increases the level of patient cooperation.