How Essential is the Leadership Skill in Nursing?

---

How essential is the leadership skill in nursing? Would you believe, “a matter of life and death?” Let’s try an analogy. If the doctors are the Prima Ballerinas, the nurses are the Rockettes. There are few human activities as team intensive as nursing. The leadership in nursing is often like a choreographer deciding when the line is to kick and turn. The leadership in nursing often is placement of people to assure the good treatment of the patients. Do not doubt that the proper placement is essential to good outcomes, but people often think of leadership as barking orders, true leadership in nursing is often quiet and thoughtful understanding and usage of people skills.

How Do Nurses Become Leaders?

Nurses tend to arrive at leadership positions through a variety of routes, few of which include formal managerial training or education. In order to produce positive results, nursing leaders will need to identify effective strategies for management of departmental staff and operations. What is often forgotten is the continual need to inspire staff in the emotion-ridden occupation of nursing. Nurses often must build a wall between themselves between the chaos going on around them and their own all-too-human feelings. A good nursing leader can help bridge that gap as well as create the perfect schedule for staffing floors.

Learning Not to Do Everything is Essential to Nursing Leadership

The most important lesson to learn in nursing leadership is delegation skills, which are critical to a leader’s ability to manage time effectively. Leaders cannot do everything. The leader’s role is to ensure completion, monitor ongoing progress, and show that various interventions have produced positive results. The leader’s effectiveness is often maximized by assigning tasks and appropriate projects to the staff nurses, as well as other administrative or support personnel. The most important job of any leader is to create new leaders. If a leader is so insecure as to not being able to delegate and enhance the self-image and abilities of the nursing staff, then that person is not a leader.

How Do I Attain Good Leadership Skills?

Often, the leader in a nursing situation must learn the skills of leadership on their personal time, since it has not been a priority in many nursing schools. There are multiple steps to check yourself and help identify personal strengths and weaknesses, and progress in your own leadership ability.

There have been some great leaders in nursing who have managed to keep schedules straight, as well as the focus of their staff. They bring energy and their love of helping others to a career that is prime for burning out people with the sheer emotional load of it. If you seek a nursing leadership role than one of the best things that you can do is contact people who have shown the leadership skills that you want to have. Pick their brains and take the skills that match your personality. If you do not think that leadership skills are important in nursing, imagine the Rockettes without a choreographer.