Transformational Leadership In Nursing

Leadership is seen consistently in day to day life whether it is in the form of an appointed leader or a mentor, this is a particularly necessary skill for a nurse as they must educate their, patients, the patients families, student nurses and at times their colleagues. The style a leader utilises can define the effectiveness of their leadership, throughout this essay I will compare and critique the following styles of leadership; autocratic, Laissez-faire, democratic, transactional and transformational and discuss their use in clinical practice.

Transformational
Transformational leadership has been defined by Doody and Doody (2012) as leaders and followers raising one another to levels of motivation and morality. It is based on the idea that …show more content…
Bally (2007) suggests that transformational leadership is where supportive environments of shared responsibility are created, this is important in the clinical setting because it allows for the creation of a cohesive team, where peers can assist each other and seek help when they need it. Transformational leadership is applied to nursing through four components as stated by Vogelaar (2007); idealised influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individual consideration. The concept of idealised influence is all about the leader being a role model, it is designed to build confidence, admiration, respect and trust, Wang, Oh, Courtright, and Colbert (2011) states that having an idealised role model means that often there is less resistance to changes and new initiatives. This style meets nursing standards, particularly; engages in therapeutic and professional relationships as it is heavily based on teamwork and building and maintaining relationships within the clinical setting. The second component for implementing transformational leadership is inspirational motivation as defined by Bally (2007) involves encouraging others to achieve the desired outcomes of the organisation …show more content…
Robbins (2007) also suggests that leaders who adopt this style of leadership are not attempting to make big changes rather than merely keeping things the way that they are. Beauchamp, Welch, and Hulley (2007) states that good leaders demonstrate both transactional and transformational characteristics requiring a marriage of both styles complementing and enhancing each other. Transactional leaders accept goals and appreciate structure and can be task orientated, this can be useful in a clinical setting as its often busy and it aids in working through tasks, however if they are too structured there can be concerns when the priorities of a nurse’s tasks are constantly changing. Transactional managers utilise reward and punishment to get tasks done, while this is a well-known training and leadership tool it can also have very negative connotations, some individuals do not respond well to punishment and this also very much depends on what the punishment is. For example evidence from Ekici and Beder (2014) shows that being scolded in a clinical setting can reduce confidence levels, reduce motivation and cause issues for individuals in the work place, any of the above outcomes are contradictory of an ideal leader. One benefit of transactional leadership in a

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