Leadership Styles in Professional Nursing Dissertation

Leadership Styles in Professional Nursing - Dissertation Example Leadership Styles in Professional Nursing The literature suggests that there are many traits that go into forming an effective leader. As an example, Boumans and Landerweerd (1993) suggest that leaders must have "clinical knowledge, people orientation, communication skills, reality orientation, the ability to identify problems and to delegate responsibility" (p. 768). These skills were stated to be those that made a positive impact on the nurses that were supervised. Most leadership styles have their base in social leadership if the nurse is effective. Boumans and Landerweerd found in their study that when social leadership was presented, the nurses under their leadership felt that their job had meaning and they felt increased job satisfaction. Also, the social leadership style promotes more positive health and well being than a style that is more dictatorial or direct. Sellgren, Ekvall, and Tomson (2006) state that nursing leadership styles are more involved with the characteristics that leaders have rather than having a sp ecific style. There are preferred traits that are more important as well. In their style, communication was the highest ranking trait that a leader ship exhibit. This goes along with what Boumans and Landerweerd found. Therefore, communication is one of the most important aspects of a nurse's leadership style. There should also be a way to communicate the leader's needs in specific ways that are understandable to their subordinates. This will bring about a happier group of nurses on the ward. (Sellgren, Ekvall, and Tomson, 2006). Kenmore (2008) found that the styles that most nurses used were either affiliative or coaching. Affiliative leaders work well when everything is running smoothly and when staff is highly motivated. The afffiliative style creates harmony and the style also works well when teams need to be healed or when staff needs motivating. When a leader has a more coaching orientation to leadership, they are more interested in improving staff's professional development