Nursing Leadership Style

Nursing school has by far been one of the most challenging experiences in my life. It makes you re-think the way that you typically interact with others, communicate with them, and work with them. It teaches you to become a team player, while also prepares you to become a leader, someone who influences a group of people to achieve a goal. Nursing school has also tested me mentally, physically, and emotionally. However, I am very grateful for the experiences, especially in the clinical area. In clinical, there have been several times where I had to exhibit leadership. One particular situation in which I exhibited leadership was during my Adult Medical-Surgical clinical rotation about two years ago.

During my Adult Medical-Surgical clinical

The different leadership styles include: autocratic leadership, democratic leadership, bureaucratic leadership, laissez-faire leadership, and transformational leadership. The type of leadership that I exhibited two years ago during my Adult Medical-Surgical clinical rotation was autocratic leadership. According to Cope (2017), autocratic leadership is a form of transactional leadership, in which one person leads and controls the situation, makes decisions, and gives the group orders. It is evident that I demonstrated autocratic leadership because I was controlling and demanding during this particular situation. I gave everyone orders to stop what they were doing when the patient’s IV line was tangled and came up with a plan for everyone to follow. Although this leadership style did not allow for much flexibility between the other people involved, it was extremely effective and efficient because the patient’s IV line was untangled and my leadership successfully prevented the IV from ripping

Power can be both constructive and destructive in a situation. There are several types of power including: legitimate, reward, corrosive, referred, expert, informational, and persuasive. Legitimate refers to someone having a role or position that entitles that person to have power over you. Reward is the promise of something that will benefit you, for example, food, money, vacation days, etc. Corrosive refers to the threat a person holding something over you in a harmful, destructive, cruel way. Referred is a person whom everybody can confine in, not necessarily the leader or even manager, just someone everyone can go to for advice and help. According to Hellebrand (2017), expert refers to someone who has a certain type of expertise in an area, for example, someone who specializes in wound care or burns. Hellebrand (2017) goes on to say that she believes that nurses have the power to have expert power because of the skills and knowledge that we possess. Informational is the person who always seems to know what is going on, on the floor- everyone either tells them everything or they find things out. Lastly, persuasive is someone who always knows the right thing to say to get someone else to do what he or she