Learning outcomes:
- Know yourself as a leader
- 5 leadership styles characteristics, advantages and disadvantages will be highlighted.
- Leadership behaviour
As you review the different leadership styles you may relate to some and have that aha moment, or leaders may resonate with you. Then you can build on your self-awareness around your strengths and potential areas of growth or your approach to leadership utilising the leadership styles.
Firstly, get to know your authentic self, your strengths and values then ensure that your behaviour is congruent with the identified values to be a leader.
Reflect on:
Q&A: What types of characteristics do leaders regularly display?
(Write 2-3 paragraphs)
Q&A: Which leadership styles do you think are the most effective?
(Write 2-3 paragraphs)
Q&A: When should certain leadership styles be applied? Can you demonstrate when you have utilised different leadership styles for the environment/situation?
(Write 2-3 paragraphs)
Q&A: What are your strengths?
(Write 2-3 paragraphs)
At the core of leadership development lies ‘knowing yourself’. Knowing your beliefs and values will help you understand how they drive your emotions and behaviour. It will allow you to manage your emotions to understand what makes you flourish and why.
When you know your strengths and weaknesses, you can develop yourself as a nurse leader.
The importance of knowing yourself cannot be underestimated, it means that you can make life decisions that have distinctive qualities that are yours and yours alone.
Now is the time to become aware of ways to improve yourself as a leader.
Regardless of the role that you are in, there is one thing that is ultimately important to ensure you are becoming the kind of leader you want to be, knowing your core values.
Core values are simply the fundamental beliefs a person holds true. Once established with clarity, these guiding beliefs dictate behaviour and help you decipher right from wrong.
This is important as your current feelings and emotions win over your values if they are not clearly defined and intentionally set. When this happens, this is not good leadership, justifying all those poor decisions.
Do not let this happen to you. Take the time to either define your core values or remind yourself of them.
Values are the primary drivers of all human behaviour. We have a hierarchy of values that drive our behaviour. They are intangible abstract concepts and can evolve over time.
Personal values are an internal reference for what we find good, important and desirable. They generate our emotions, thoughts and behaviour and influence the choices we make. Cultural values are the values that the members of a community share with one and another.
A values conflict occurs when we are forced to behave in a way that is not in alignment with our own values. It produces an uncomfortable internal feeling. To deal with that undesirable feeling, people either change their behaviour, or change their value.
Q&A: Determine your top values, based on your experience of happiness, pride, and fulfillment. Use the list of common personal values (below). Aim for a maximum of ten values and prioritise them.
(List 10 bullet point sentences)
Overview of personal core values
Acceptance
Authenticity
Achievement
Adventure
Authority
Autonomy
Accomplishment
Ambition
Altruism
Balance
Beauty
Bravery
Boldness
Compassion
Challenge
Citizenship
Community
Competency
Contribution
Creativity
Curiosity
Determination
Fairness
Faith
Fame
Flexibility
Friendships
Fun
Growth
Grateful
Happiness
Honesty
Humour
Honour
Influence
Inner harmony
Individuality
Justice
Kindness
Knowledge
Leadership
Learning
Love
Loyalty
Meaningful work
Openness
Optimism
Peace
Pleasure
Poise
Pride
Popularity
Recognition
Religion
Reputation
Respect
Realistic
Responsibility
Security
Self-respect
Service
Spirituality
Stability
Success
Status
Strength
Self-reliance
Sincerity
Trustworthiness
Thoughtful
Understanding
Vision
Vitality
Wealth
Wisdom
Winning
Q&A: Reaffirm your top priority values, and make sure that they fit with your life and the vision you have for yourself.
1. Do these values make you feel good about yourself?
2. Are you proud of your top three values, do they resonate with you?
3. Are they reflective on your decision making?
(Write 1-2 paragraphs for each question above)
In social psychology, an attitude is evaluation or cognitive schema relating to an object, person, group, team that you are leading, an issue or concept. In short, your attitude is your opinion about something or someone. Attitudes can vary in strength and can be positive or negative towards others or your team.
Important for your leadership journey is to discover your attitudes about your leadership.
“You are what you are and where you are, because of what has gone into your mind. You can change what you are, and you can change where you are by changing what goes into your mind.” Zig Ziglar.
Q&A: What leaders inspire you and why?
(Write 2-3 paragraphs)
Q&A: What leadership styles do you think are positive and negative? Why?
(Write 2-3 paragraphs)
Q&A: What kind of nurse leader do you aspire to be?
(Write 2-3 paragraphs)
Leadership styles
A leadership style refers to a leader’s characteristic behaviours when directing, motivating, guiding, and managing people. Great leaders can inspire, empower, and motivate others to perform, create, and innovate and assist to improve and ensure others succeed.
There are often vast differences in how each person leads.
In 1939, a group of researchers led by psychologist Kurt Lewin set out to identify different styles of leadership. There are different ways in which a leader can manage his or her team members. Regardless of the setting, there are a variety of options available to the leader depending on what strategy or style they believe will create, empower, and develop the best possible performance from their team. Not only can leadership strategies vary from person to person, but the same person can often use different strategies in different situations in order to achieve maximum results. The leader who is stuck in only one way of thinking and never responds to changes around them or cannot adapt to change, is one who is unlikely to be a leader for long.
Leadership styles can assist you with your approach to situations and your team. By understanding leadership styles and approaches to leadership, you can then choose the style that fits with your leadership values and behaviour. You could also pick out characteristics from each style or those that suit you, best fit with your role and personality and your team.
Authoritarian leaders, also known as autocratic leaders, provide clear expectations for what needs to be done when it should be done, and how it should be done. This style of leadership is strongly focused on both command by the leader and control of the followers. There is also a clear division between the leader and team members. Authoritarian leaders make decisions independently with little or no input from the rest of the team.
Authoritarian leadership is best applied to situations where there is little time for team decision-making or where the leader is the most knowledgeable member of the team. The autocratic approach can be a good one when the situation calls for rapid decisions and decisive actions.
Advantages
- Improves performance in certain circumstances, no consultation.
- Less stressful in certain situations as leader ultimately responsible.
Disadvantages
- Focused on the leader.
- Decisions made by leader.
- Frustrating, as there is no questioning.
- Opportunities missed, due to lack of flexibility.
- Fear from nurses towards leader. Feelings of being bullied.
- Communication breakdown / lack of communication from nurses to leader. Communication is one way.
- Lack of or no feedback.
This leadership is useful when
- Quick decisions are required.
- Close supervision is needed / education.
- Workflows are streamlined quickly, things need to be completed; disaster, MET call, performance plan.
Autocratic leaders have a high emphasis on tasks and a low emphasis on people.
The most effective leadership style. Democratic leaders offer guidance to team members, but they also participate in the team and allow input from team members. Democratic leadership tends to be focused on the team with decision making shared across the team.
Participative leaders encourage team members to participate, but retain the final say in the decision-making process. Team members feel engaged in the process and are more motivated and creative. Democratic leaders tend to make the team feel engaged which helps foster commitment to organisational goals. People who work under such leaders tend to get along well, support one another, and consult other members of the team when making decisions.
Advantages
- Decreased risk of failure.
- Decisions made with the team, team discussion and problem solving.
- Good working environment.
- High performing teams.
- Good open communication.
Disadvantages
- Slow decision making.
- Overdependence on the team, rely on the team for decision making.
This leadership is useful when
- When the team are experts, specialty nurses within an area, expert in their field.
- Create ownership amongst the team, creating buy-in for the decision and plan of action.
Democratic leaders have a high emphasis on tasks and their team.
Delegative leaders offer little or no guidance to the team and leave the decision-making up to team members. While this style can be useful in situations involving highly qualified experts, it often leads to poorly defined roles and a lack of motivation.
Laissez-faire leadership tends to result in teams that lack direction where members blame each other for mistakes, refuse to accept personal responsibility, and produce a lack of progress to achieve goals and the vision of the team.
The key to their success is to build a very strong team and then stay out of their way, so that they can work autonomously to achieve the goals and vision.
Advantages
- Creates personal responsibility.
- Challenge the team for the outcomes of their work.
- Supports corrections, by successful motivated people working autonomously and are adaptable to change.
- Supports higher retention, as motivated people that can work autonomously thrive in the workplace environment.
Disadvantages
- Lack of accountability as no reward or acknowledgement for the teams work when there is success.
- Higher stress and decreased motivation as feel unsupported by their leader.
- Missed deadlines due to lack of reaching or progressing towards goals.
This leadership is useful when
- Senior leaders, top of the organisation or head of the department.
- Creative experts
- Driven team that can achieve goals on their own.
Delegative Leadership (Laissez-Faire) leaders have a low emphasis on task and a low emphasis on their team.
The single most effective style.
Transformational leadership leads to improved well-being among team members as models of behaviour are set, clear goals identified, and the leader has high expectations that are known by the team and offers support to ensure that the team succeeds. Some of the key characteristics of his style of leadership are the ability to motivate and inspire followers and to direct positive changes in teams.
Transformational leaders tend to be more emotionally intelligent, energetic, and passionate. They are not only committed to helping the organisation achieve its goals, but also to helping team members fulfill their potential.
This style of leadership results in higher performance and more improved team satisfaction than other leadership styles. There is a focus on a culture of no blame where the focus is on the problem and how to solve the problem.
Advantages
- Balanced goals, short and long-term goals.
- Trust is built and maintained with the team and the leader, as the team feels supported by the leader who acts with integrity and builds partnerships.
- Vision focused communication on the long-term vision.
Disadvantages
- Could be ineffective to commence with, as they are to build trust with the team.
- Not detail oriented.
This leadership is useful when
- When the organisation or team have a long-term vision.
- When a short-term focus or urgent goals are not required.
- When the leader is not new to the organisation and they have proven trust and alliance with the team. Though this may take time when the leader is new to the organisation.
The transactional leadership style views the leader-follower relationship as a transaction. By accepting a position as a member of the team, the individual has agreed to obey the leader. In most situations, this involves the employer-employee relationship, and the transaction focuses on the team members completing required tasks in exchange for monetary compensation.
One of the main advantages of this leadership style is that it creates clearly defined roles.
People know what they are required to do and what they will be receiving in exchange for completing these tasks. It also allows leaders to offer a great deal of supervision and direction if it is needed. Team members may also be motivated to perform well to receive rewards. One of the biggest downsides is that the transactional style tends to stifle creativity and out-of-the-box thinking.
Your default leadership style is the style that you feel most comfortable leading others to achieve your vision or goals. It is important to understand the type of leader you are, then you will be equipped to avoid the common pitfalls of that style.
There are many other leadership styles, though they can be categorised by their team and task focus.
- Strategic
- Servant
- Coaching style
- Bureaucratic
- And many others
Just remember that no two leaders are exactly the same and may have traits from other leadership styles to suit their needs as they feel best.
Q&A: When do you think leadership styles can be effective? List the styles that you use.
(Write bullet point sentences)
Q&A: What do you believe are success factors that contribute to the practical application of these leadership styles?
(Write 2-3 paragraphs)
Leadership is not a job; it is an outlook backed up by actions and behaviours.
Leadership Behaviour
20 leadership behaviours, leadership teams displayed 4 of the 20 types of behaviour for leadership effectiveness.
1. Be supportive
2. Champion desired change
3. Clarify objectives, rewards and consequences
4. Communicate prolifically and enthusiastically
5. Develop others
6. Develop and share a collective mission
7. Differentiate among followers
8. Facilitate team collaboration
9. Foster mutual respect
10. Give praise
11. Keep team organised and on task
12. Make quality decisions
13. Motivate and bring out the best in others
14. Offer a critical perspective
15. Operate with strong results orientation
16. Recover positively from failures
17. Remain composed and confident in uncertainty
18. Role model organisational values
19. Seek different perspectives
20. Solve problems effectively
Supporting others; Leaders who are supportive understand and sense how other people feel. By showing authenticity and sincere interest in those around them, they build trust and inspire them to help colleagues overcome challenges.
Operating with a strong result orientation; Leadership is not just about developing and communicating a vision and setting goals/objectives but also following through to achieve results. Leaders with a strong results orientation tend to emphasise the importance of efficiency and productivity so to prioritise the highest value work.
Seeking different perspectives; Encourage teams to contribute ideas that could improve performance, outcomes and goals. Differentiate between priorities and importance and give feedback. Leaders base their decisions on sound analysis and avoid bias to which decision making could be prone too.
Solve problems effectively; Problem solving precedes decision making, information gathering and analysis. This is key for decision making.
Personal Accountability
Hold yourself accountable to a certain standard, professional behaviour that treats people that way that you would want to be treated.
Accountability does not happen by accident. It takes inviting people into your life to hold you accountable. This can be as a professional coach, friend, colleague, spouse, or an online leadership chat group. Increasing your accountability can also occur by increasing your leadership knowledge.
All nurses are leaders, you do not need to have leadership in your title to be a leader.
Leadership is distributed throughout the organisation, and leaders can be found at all levels of the organisational hierarchy.
If you are interested in learning more about leadership and developing your leadership potential or fine tune your leadership style with the:
References
Cherry, K. January 16, 2020. Leadership Styles and Frameworks, You Should Know. Verywellmind. https://www.verywellmind.com/leadership-styles-2795312. Accessed 25 May 2020.
Feser, C. Mayol, F and Srinivasan R. Decoding Leadership: What really matters. McKinsey and Company.
Sari, J. 2020. Lewin’s Leadership Styles https://www.toolshero.com/leadership/lewin-leadership-styles/ Accessed 29 January 2021.
Chou, S. Y. (2012). Millennials in the workplace: A conceptual analysis of millennials’ leadership and followership styles. International Journal of Human Resource Studies, 2(2). http://www.macrothink.org/journal/index.php/ijhrs/article/view/1568/1545
Molero, F., Cuadrado, I., Navas, M., & Morales, J. F. (2007). Relations and effects of transformational leadership: A comparative analysis with traditional leadership styles. The Spanish journal of psychology, 10(2), 358-368. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/5853763_Relations_and_Effects_of_Transformational_Leadership_A_Comparative_Analysis_with_Traditional_Leadership_Styles
