Nursing Leadership Styles Paper

Leadership styles are a vital component in strong and effective nursing leadership. These leadership styles consist of transformational leadership, charismatic leadership, transactional leadership, autocratic leadership, and passive avoidant leadership and each of these leadership styles consists of different components which has the potential to positively or negatively affect nursing leadership as a whole. Leaders in nursing have the duty to create and preserve a work environment which not only encourages positive patient outcomes but also positively influences teams and individual nurses. Leadership style has been recognized as a huge contributing factor in creating a positive work environment, leading to improved recruitment and maintenance

Autocratic leadership is dictated by the leader of the team and little to no feedback is accepted from team members. Autocratic leaders have best been described using employee surveys as controlling, power oriented and closed minded as discovered through the testing of the Bass theory (Giltinane, 2013). Most of the time team members dislike autocratic leaders but in many situations they may work well under this form of leadership. What normally starts out as stress induced by obedience, loyalty and strict adherence to rules, can turn into appreciation and fondness once positive results begin to show. Benefits of autocratic leaders include great structure and guidance concerning tasks that need to be completed and rewards are typically provided to members who are compliant with rules and tasks and punishment is also enforced when members are found to be noncompliant with standards set by the leader. Negative aspects of autocratic leadership include taking advantage of power, instilling fear among team members, and making decisions without regard for the interest in the greater good of the group. There can also be heavy reliance on the leader which can cause underperformance of duties when the leader is absent or unavailable and the autocratic leader of the team may also feel extreme amounts of pressure due to assumed responsibility and accountability for actions (Giltinane, 2013). In certain situations, strong

This leadership style consists of two components as well: management by exception which is passive and laissez faire in which involvement is avoided (Malloy and Penprase, 2010). In this style of leadership, leaders have little to no control over team members and typically do not provide direction in day to day affairs of the team. This laid back style of leadership usually results in little cooperation from team members and team members tend to struggle with completing day to day tasks. Passive avoidant leadership typically leads to unaddressed poor performance, poor quality patient care, and unacceptable behaviors by team members (Giltinane, 2013). Negative outcomes are most likely to persist under this form of leadership including lower levels of job satisfaction, decreased leader effectiveness, decreased satisfaction with the leader, and low levels of commitment and effort. This is evidenced by Malloy and Penprases study as well which concluded that 17 out of 37 of the psychosocial dimensions in the workplace demonstrated negative correlation with passive avoidant nurse leadership. Most often passive avoidant leadership has been positively correlated with burnout of team members, emotional exhaustion, and depersonalization during performance of duties (Malloy and Penprase, 2010). This leadership style is not suggested for strong nursing leadership because it is very inefficient and