Discussion 1: Leadership Theories in Practice

Discussion 1: Leadership Theories in Practice

Key insights

The first insight is that leadership is important as it is the driving force of an organization. It requires possession of skills, experience and influence which can motivate the employees (Duggan et al, 2015). These characteristics are to be possessed by any nursing leader to ensure that they inspire the nurses to achieve the set goals.

The second insight is that a true transformational leader has to have knowledge of different leadership theories. This will guide their leadership through the assimilation and integration of features from the various leadership theories (Marshall & Broome, 2017). Naturally, a leader may be drawn towards one particular theory, however, they should remember not to neglect the others since they have their positive aspects.

Nurse Leadership

A leader in an organization I once worked for followed the behavioral theory. He ensured that the environment which the workers worked was conducive. This was to avoid any excuses which may deter the effective performance of the workers. However, everything was not cast on stone and there was room to explain what went wrong in certain instances. For this approach, he employed the situational theory. Therefore, he was not overly reliant on one leadership theory while ignoring all the others. The results for this approach was good performance from the employees and it improved their accountability. I believe that this was as a result of creating a conducive working environment and creating good relations with the employees. Being able to employ different leadership theories is a skill which only good leaders possess and it is evident that this leader had this skill.