Leaders inspire, motivate, and influence their followers to follow the path and direction they set. They help followers understand and align themselves with the organization's goals and objectives. The trait theory establishes that leaders are born with certain skills that make them capable of leadership, while the skills theory proposes that leaders can learn such skills from others. Such shows that leaders should possess certain characteristics that help fulfill their roles and responsibilities no matter the theory chosen. On the other hand, managers make sure that daily operations go ahead as planned, and all resources are used effectively, and all employees are held accountable for their jobs. This paper will discuss my experience under a preceptor, evaluate as well as critique their leadership style. It will also propose my views on the best leadership style and propose the one I would adopt.
Leadership Style of my Nurse Leader
I was a nurse in a nephrology office about a year ago. In the office, five nurses were headed by one nurse leader. My preceptor in that office worked as the patient care coordinator. Therefore, he had duties such as receiving new patients and following up on treated patients to make sure they attended their follow-up appointments and that their care had been successful. Whenever the patient complained after surgery or any specialized care, we had to consult him before following it up with the patient and physicians. He also had the role of assigning tasks to us and evaluating our performance. The preceptor was like a clinical supervisor, especially to two other younger nurses in that team and me.
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The style of leadership adopted by this preceptor was very people-centered. He was a friendly person who tried to form relationships with all his patients and the nursing group. One of his key phrases was, "These are our patients; if anything preventable happens to them, then we have failed them." Due to this friendly approach, he would sometimes supervise junior nurses' work, especially when recording patient details and medical history to make sure no mistake occurred and that the nurses got the basic stuff that would ease their workload. When it came to the senior nurses, especially a woman who was a little bit older than he was, he would relinquish control. Sometimes, when he was preoccupied, he let the older nurses go straight to the doctors with their findings and leave them to try some minor changes independently. Whenever those experienced nurses wanted to introduce changes, he would allow them to research and present them to the team, and then he would join the whole group in learning from them.
Seeing how he changed his leadership and delegated control in various circumstances, he practiced a situational leadership type. He coached and supervised the junior staff and sometimes let the more experienced ones do things their way. Also, this was not without limits since during emergencies, when dealing with particular patients, or when a new change was to affect the provision of care given to patients, he would be consulted, and only he could give the go-ahead before anything proceeded. There was this old patient who had been a patient at the facility for five years whose every medical directive had to pass through him. This is due to the preceptor's deep knowledge of the patient's complex medical history.
Advantage of the Transactional Leadership Style
This type of leadership was great due to the flexibility it offered. It allowed the junior staff the chance to slowly get used to making autonomous decisions without the pressure of being blamed when something went wrong. It also showed the senior staff that the preceptor trusted them and engaged them in decision-making regarding how the office's service provision should go. It also ensured that there were capable leaders in his absence to steer us ahead since they had been allowed the freedom to lead. Supervisors are expected to delegate duties among employees and help employees transition their training skills to actual job performance (Govaerts et al., 2017). This requires a good understanding of the employees' abilities, which is only possible through good interpersonal relationships with them and requires a leader who gives them feedback and appreciates their skills and limitations. Our preceptor was very good at this due to his situational leadership. He was able to coach and motivate younger nurses like me and was, therefore, aware of everyone's skillset in the team. Such also ensured that the facility never lacked direction and there was no complacency because he would take charge whenever needed, especially in critical moments, and would push everyone to their potential.
Changes I Would Advise
The flexibility and employee closeness offered by this leadership style rather present a few disadvantages. For example, our preceptor spent so much supervising the junior employees that he sometimes forgot to notice they had grown and changed. This made it hard to exert a bit of pressure, which is required to push one's job maturity to the next level. On the other hand, when he assumed a telling approach during critical times, he would be so focused that he could keep up with it even after the emergency period had passed. This created confusion at times since it was not clear whether the team had failed in meeting his expectations or he had been the one who overfocused on such a style. I would change the style's focus on nurses' present effectiveness to the group's long-term planning. If he offered motivation and supervision for the whole group with a long-term vision of growth through transformative leadership, he would not need to supervise the employees intermittently. This would also create a plan and procedure for emergencies, which would not require so much control and forgetting to ease up.
My Views on Best Leadership
Transformational leadership is the greatest leadership style due to its focus on driving employee-initiated change. This is because a transformative leader helps employees change their mindset and attitudes to limitations and outperform their expectations. Transformative leadership creates a cultural change that has a long term impact and leads to a self-sustaining environment where employees require little management and supervision.
I want to be a leader who gives my staff support, guidance, and appreciation, especially considering nurses' challenging work. A great supervisor's work helps employees balance work and personal lives and set an organizational objective aimed at this, leading to the alleviation of work-related pressures and stress (Talukdel, 2019). Resilience-based supervision, which helps nurses acquire strategies to deal with organizational failures and work around day-to-day stressors, is the nursing field's current focus (Stacey et al., 2017). Reduction of stress, worry, and burnout improves healthcare provision quality and improves nurses' and patients' lives. I believe this can be achieved by democratic leadership, which decentralizes decision making and increases informational flow. I would adopt such a leadership style and couple it with transformative leadership in my practice because engagement with nurses would help me understand their stressors and factors frustrating them. This would integrate their insights into policy formulation to alleviate stressors and empower them to handle challenges and improve their performance.
References
Govaerts, N., Kyndt, E., Vreye, S., & Dochy, F. (2017). A supervisors' perspective on their role in transfer of training. Human Resource Development Quarterly , 28 (4), 515-552. https://doi.org/10.1002/hrdq.21286
Stacey, G., Aubeeluck, A., Cook, G., & Dutta, S. (2017). A case study exploring the experience of resilience-based clinical supervision and its influence on care towards self and others among student nurses. International Practice Development Journal , 7 (2), 1-16. https://doi.org/10.19043/ipdj.72.005
Talukder, A. K. (2019). Supervisor support and organizational commitment: The role of work–family conflict, job satisfaction, and work–life balance. Journal of Employment Counseling , 56 (3), 98-116. https://doi.org/10.1002/joec.12125
