Real-life Scenario

Leadership is a very important personality trait that each and every individual must possess.  In everyday life, there are various scenarios where the need for able and assertive leadership skills to facilitate rights and justice becomes crucial (Davis, Corless and Nicholas 2018).  Even in the professional field, the need for adequate leadership is imperative, with multidisciplinary teams working together conspicuous everywhere. Especially in the context of healthcare and nursing, the need for adequate leadership has never been as crucial as it is right now, and in this first slide I would like to introduce importance of leadership in nursing field.  Healthcare is being provided in multidisciplinary setting all across the globe. The advantages to a multidisciplinary healthcare service are numerous, although there are certain disadvantages as well (Démeh and Rosengren 2015). With a variety of different professionals belonging to different professional disciplines, the risk of conflict and interpersonal management challenges are very high which might affect the patient care if not addressed immediately.  Hence, the need for adequate leadership in the nursing professionals is extreme, so that they can prioritize the care needs of the patient over any conflict and can help facilitate optimal care services as smoothly as possible (Grossman and Valiga 2016).  In this presentation I would like to shade light on the aspect of leadership in nursing, how I have experienced the leadership in my placement, and how it helped me understand the importance of leadership in our position taking the assistance of different leadership theories.

In the next two slides, I will attempt to illustrate the leadership scenario I experienced in my placement. The leadership instance or scenario which I will be focusing on for this presentation refers to one of the shift work nights that I had to complete as a student. This night stands out as an inspiring moment of leadership which presented itself in the form of most urgent crisis situation.  I had been placed in elderly care ward where my mentor discovered a patient helplessly laying on the floor.  Understanding the urgency of the situation, my mentor quickly informed all the available staff and communicated the urgent need for health for the vulnerable elderly patient.  I observed my mentor instantly slip into the role of a potent leader, arranged and designated different tasks to be completed to different members of the available staff. The tasks were many and complicating, including taking vital signs, assessing for injuries, assuring the patients, and calling for additional help from the adjacent wards along with leaving a staff member available to attend the other patient in the elderly ward as well.  I noticed that my mentor had understood that the elderly patient that had fell was our highest priority, however caring for this patient must not affect the care services provided to the rest of the elderly patients as well, which is commendable (Lynch et al. 2018).

Leadership Style in the Scenario

Furthermore, I would also like to highlight that along with directing a team of 15 nurses to attend to the emergency that the elderly patient had been suffering from, our leader had been simultaneously checking for any signs of injury and quickly noticed a bruise on the patient’s left elbow.  My mentor also provided me the opportunity to check the patient’s vital signs, which seems normal after my observation.  My mentor also showed leadership qualities while communicating effectively with the patient reassuring her to be calm while she was being examined for pain score assessment.  The patient confirmed my mentor that she was able to stand up and with the taking our assistance, the patient was successfully transferred to her bed and my mentor quickly instructed us for assessing the patient before giving any analgesics to relieve any pain (Luo and Liu 2014).  I was given the opportunity to check on the vital signs of the patient every 30 minutes for 2 hours and continue hourly observations for 24 hours to ensure optimal safety of the patient.  After which my mentor contacted the doctor in charge and reported the situation following the incident reporting proforma and also an incident form was also filled along with informing the family immediately the next morning to report the accident (Meier 2016).

Hence, I have to appreciate the quick thinking and logical reasoning skills of our leader where she didn’t hesitate for a second before slipping into the role of a leader and took charge to help a vulnerable and possibly injured patient in the ward. This experience only enhanced my respect for my mentor and I realized that I aspire to become as competent as her in both my professional responsibilities and leadership skills and qualities.

In the next two slides, I will discuss the leadership style that corresponds to the leadership scenario illustrated before. Discussing the leadership qualities that my mentor expressed in this urgent situation, it can be considered that the situational leadership theory is the most relatable to the leadership qualities and the situation that we are reviewing in this presentation (Hutchinson 2018).  Situational leadership had been developed and studied by Kenneth Blanchard and Paul Hersey.  This leadership refers to the adjusting of the leadership style by the leader or manager of the organization in order to fit into the situation and address the need of the hour of the situation (Scully 2015). In this particular leadership style, the leader is capable of changing or modifying his leadership qualities with respect to the exact needs of the people that he or she is leading and the situation that has presented itself. It has to be mentioned that in situational leadership the leadership style of the leader may change continually in order to keep meeting the needs of the stakeholders of the situation and address the need of the hour (Stanley 2016).

Key Learning Points

In this case my mentor has successfully followed each and every trait of a situational leader as needed while addressing the crisis or emergency that we discovered in the elderly ward that night. Elaborating further, telling and directing is a very important aspect of a situational leader, where the leader has to swiftly make quick decisions and direct followers to achieve a set of goals (Mannix, Wilkes and Daly 2015). Elaborating more, this leadership style is also called micromanagement, as the leader is very involved so that everybody will understand and will comply with the orders or responsibilities assigned.  On the other hand, selling and coaching is also a key trait of a situational leader. In this case although the decision still lies in the hands of the leader, the input is requested from all of the staff. This had also been followed in case of my mentor, where she was delegating responsibilities with asking whether the staff has any issues and challenges to completing these responsibilities (Carragher and Gormley 2017).

Along with that, participating and supporting is also very important aspect of a situational leader, where the success of the entire team lies on the direction and guidance provided by the situational leader.  In this case,  my mentor have been very involved with the patient care along with delegating responsibilities which not only inspired us to provide our best efforts but also guided us thoroughly in completing these challenging responsibilities. Considering the delegating abilities which is are fundamental trait of a situational leader, it can be mentioned that situational leaders provide the employees with the clarity regarding their role and the tasks needed to be completed so that it can be carried out effectively and functionally.  In this case as well, my mentor had been very efficient and proactive in delegating responsibilities clearly so that we have clarity of the tasks that we need to be performing in that urgent situation which is very important for crisis resolving (Park 2015).  

 In the next two slides, I will discuss key learning points covered in the assignment.  It has been mentioned in this context that my mentor had been very involved with the entire procedure and she knew exactly the development the level of each employee and accordingly she delegated the responsibilities. Criticizing the situational leadership style, situation leadership is divided into four elements of leadership qualities, directing, coaching, supporting, and delegating, which has been followed effectively by my mentor. However, in the crisis situations, motivating the employees is also very important aspect of leadership that the nurse is required to be performing in order to be able to provide adequate services in spite of the physical and emotional exhaustion (Alharbi 2017).  In this case my mentor had focused entirely on slipping into the role of an assertive and potential situational leader but she had not been very compassionate or empathetic to either the patient or the staff.

In the last concluding slide, I would like to mention that for crisis situation, situational leadership provides the best leadership model or framework which can help the individual providing leadership to address the differential need of the crisis situation effectively.  Although in the field of healthcare, compassion and empathy are a very important aspect even in leadership, which can only be provided through aesthetic leadership combining the pros of transformational leadership and situational leadership blended together.  This presentation has covered the scenario of leadership and the leadership theory outlining and criticizing the pros and cons of the leadership style.  This opportunity has been excellent for me to represent the experience that I had had and decide the leadership traits that I need to develop that will help me in my future. I am completely awed by my mentor’s swift leadership skills and the situational leadership style that she effortlessly exhibited in that crisis situation. Hence, for my professional leadership components I would like to incorporate both situational and transformational leadership, so that I can provide compassion and empathy as well when leading a team.

References:

Alharbi, A.Y., 2017. Leadership Styles of Nurse Managers And Their Effects On Nurse And Organisational Performance, Issues And Problems.

Carragher, J. and Gormley, K., 2017. Leadership and emotional intelligence in nursing and midwifery education and practice: a discussion paper. Journal of advanced nursing, 73(1), pp.85-96.

Davis, S.M., Corless, I. and Nicholas, P., 2018. The critical need for global nursing leadership. DNP Education, Practice, and Policy: Redesigning Advanced Practice for the 21st Century, p.331.

Démeh, W. and Rosengren, K., 2015. The visualisation of clinical leadership in the content of nursing education—a qualitative study of nursing students’ experiences. Nurse education today, 35(7), pp.888-893.

Grossman, S. and Valiga, T.M., 2016. The new leadership challenge: Creating the future of nursing. FA Davis.

Hersey, P., 2014. The Hersey and Blanchard situational leadership theory. Retrieved from www. leadership-central. com/situational-leadership-theory. html on May, 19, p.2014.

Huber, D., 2017. Leadership and Nursing Care Management-E-Book. Elsevier Health Sciences.

Hutchinson, M., 2018. The crisis of public trust in governance and institutions: Implications for nursing leadership. Journal of nursing management, 26(2), pp.83-85.

Luo, H. and Liu, S., 2014. Effect of situational leadership and employee readiness match on organizational citizenship behavior in China. Social Behavior and Personality: an international journal, 42(10), pp.1725-1732.

Lynch, B., 2015. Partnering for performance in situational leadership: a person-centred leadership approach. International Practice Development Journal, 5.

Lynch, B.M., 2015. The role of situational leadership in facilitating culture change in long term care facilities for older people (Doctoral dissertation, Ulster University).

Lynch, B.M., McCance, T., McCormack, B. and Brown, D., 2018. The development of the Person?centred Situational Leadership Framework: Revealing the being of person?centredness in nursing homes. Journal of clinical nursing, 27(1-2), pp.427-440.

Mannix, J., Wilkes, L. and Daly, J., 2015. Aesthetic leadership: its place in the clinical nursing world. Issues in mental health nursing, 36(5), pp.357-361.

McCleskey, J.A., 2014. Situational, transformational, and transactional leadership and leadership development. Journal of Business Studies Quarterly, 5(4), p.117.

Meier, D., 2016. Situational Leadership Theory as a Foundation for a Blended Learning Framework. Journal of Education and Practice, 7(10), pp.25-30.

Park, I.S., 2015. The Effect of Situational Leadership Program on Critical Thinking, Coaching and Empowerment of Nurse Leader. Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society, 16(12), pp.8568-8575.

Scully, N.J., 2015. Leadership in nursing: The importance of recognising inherent values and attributes to secure a positive future for the profession. Collegian, 22(4), pp.439-444.

Stanley, D., 2016. Clinical leadership in nursing and healthcare: Values into action. John Wiley & Sons.

Thompson, G. and Glasø, L., 2015. Situational leadership theory: a test from three perspectives. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 36(5), pp.527-544.

Vandayani, P., Kartini, D. and Hilmiana, Y.A., 2015. The impact of national culture on effectiveness of situational leadership Hersey-Blanchard. DEVELOPMENT, 1, p.S4.