"Leadership is positive influence." (Hannah Miller, 2021).
Today as both formal and informal nursing professional development (NPD) leaders, we are encouraged to use our intelligence, knowledge, and evidence, not our emotions, to influence others. We are told that emotions have no place in leading healthcare agencies operating with a bottom-line mentality. Will healthcare's traditional business model adequately address recruitment, engagement, and retention of care providers?
Early in my career, I was privileged to have a caring leader who led with her heart and skilled at managing her emotions and helping me manage mine. As a young charge nurse and later as a nurse manager and chief nurse of a military evacuation hospital, I wanted to treat others as she had treated my peers and me. She never talked down to us but talked with us. No matter how busy she was, she would stop what she was doing and listen. When she listened to me, the chaos of the unit disappeared, and I felt heard and never judged. She didn't tell us what to do; she worked with us, developing our skills. She complimented us when we did well. She never offered false praise. She didn't ignore poor performance or mistakes but privately challenged us to use them as growth opportunities. Most importantly, she believed in us. Before meeting this caring leader, I was disillusioned with nursing and planned to leave the profession. She inspired me to continue nursing and to emulate her caring leadership style. Later my caring leadership was met with comments from superiors that I viewed my followers through rose-colored glasses. They thought I let my feelings for those reporting to me get in the way of my decision-making and that my caring made me appear weak. These comments went unheeded because I knew from experience that caring leadership results in engaged followers and colleagues who will go the extra mile to achieve results. Younger (2021), an expert on caring leadership and employee engagement, states that a true caring leader "excels in the domain of soft skills-a term often used to refer to skills, aptitudes, and attitudes such as integrity, communication, empathy, compassion, courtesy, responsibility, social skills, a positive attitude, professionalism, flexibility, teamwork, and strong work ethic-produces hard-core results that drive the business forward" (p. 6).
Caring leaders recognize the interrelatedness of individual and organizational well-being, development, and success. Thus, the caring leader facilitates a supportive, positive work environment. In her book, The Art of Caring Leadership: How Leading With Heart Uplifts Teams and Organizations,Younger (2021) describes nine interdependent principles of caring leaders. These were the same principles that my caring leader used to engage and inspire me many years ago. They cultivate the self, value each team member, recognize others' talents, involve others in the decision-making, address the whole person, establish a culture of listening, offer a safe space, encourage them to make decisions, and facilitate their response to adversity. These interdependent processes develop the individual and the team or organization. She ends her book with a discussion of caring leadership's return on investment.
Younger's (2021) nine principles are not new concepts. In 1990, Salovey and Mayer first used the term emotional intelligence. Goleman brought emotional intelligence into the mainstream with his 1995 book on the topic (Goleman, 1995). Just as Younger's first principle is to cultivate the self, emotional intelligence starts with self-awareness of one's emotions and the ability to manage one's emotions. It also includes social awareness, which is one's ability to read social cues and identify and manage the emotions of others. Relationship management is also a component of emotional intelligence. Individuals with excellent relationship management skills listen deeply and clearly communicate; they demonstrate empathy and respect, value others, and accept accountability for their mistakes.
After extensive research on emotional intelligence and leadership, Goleman (2004) found that although traditional business skills such as toughness, vision, intelligence, determination, and outcome focus are requisite skills, they are not enough. Excellent leaders differentiate themselves with the soft skills of emotional intelligence.
At the core of caring leadership is the belief that individuals are valuable resources and should be appreciated, respected, supported, and challenged to grow, combined with the emotional intelligence to act on this belief. In turn, this leads to higher levels of engagement and satisfaction, ultimately contributing to the success of the organization.
IMPLICATIONS FOR NPD PRACTITIONERS AS LEADERS
"For nursing professional development practitioners (NPDPs), influence is our superpower." (Rachael Frija, 2023)
Few NPD practitioners are in formal leadership positions, but most are in positions that allow them incredible influence. As our NPD colleague Rachael Frija (2023) states, influence is our superpower. Positive influence is leadership (Miller, 2021), and effective leadership requires leading with our emotions, not just raw emotions but emotional intelligence. The good news is that emotional intelligence can be developed (Goleman, 2004).
NPD practitioners influence new and continuing employees through the big six NPD responsibilities: onboarding and orientation transition staff from one specialty or role to another, providing ongoing education and competency management, supporting role transitions to new specialties or roles, entering collaborative partnerships, and engaging in inquiry (Harper & Maloney, 2022). NPD practitioners are strategically positioned to improve organizational outcomes such as nurse retention and job satisfaction by using and improving their emotional intelligence.
If you want to increase your influence, start with self-awareness by surveying your emotional intelligence quotient. There is an online free survey available at https://psychcentral.com/quizzes/emotional-intelligence-test. Once you know your strengths and weaknesses, you can develop a plan. If self-awareness is not a strength, ask your leader, colleagues, and learners for feedback and to help you identify blind spots. This takes courage but is an important first step. Pay attention to emotions. When you feel a particularly strong emotion, whether positive or negative, pause before responding by taking a deep breath to allow you to think before reacting with feelings. Other times when a pause is not enough, you will need to leave the area. Be sure to name the emotion and jot it down in a journal so that you recognize patterns and triggers and will be prepared the next time. Practice active listening. This is listening, not just to the words but to the feelings behind the words without thinking about how you will respond. Rather focus on only listening to what the speaker is saying. Verify understanding by paraphrasing what the speaker said (Landry, 2019). Improving emotional intelligence improves caring behaviors, influence, and organizational outcomes.
SUMMARY
NPD practitioners are positioned to positively influence organizational outcomes. The traditional influence/leadership model based on hard skills is not sufficient. Caring leadership is needed that not only uses knowledge and evidence but is distinguished from traditional leadership by the belief that individuals are valuable resources and should be appreciated, respected, supported, and challenged to grow, and when combined with well-developed emotional intelligence to act on this belief, higher levels of staff engagement and satisfaction result, ultimately contributing to the success of the organization.
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