Authentic Leadership And Its Application In Nursing Practice: A Case Study

TITLE:
Authentic leadership and its application in nursing practice

SCENARIO:
Within the perioperative environment, leaders are an important aspect with leadership qualities being required of all nurses when working in this fast-paced environment. To explore the potential application of authentic leadership within the perioperative environment, a scenario has been created. We are looking at the role of Clinical Nurse Specialists (CNS) and Associated Nurse Managers (ANUM) in the support and teaching of new graduate nurses in their transitions into the perioperative environment. In the scenario, our CNS Amanda has taken up a leadership role in preceptoring a new graduate within the scrub scout speciality. Amanda believes she has the natural
Amanda will draw on her own life experiences and psychological capacities to foster the graduate nurses’ development, encouraging open communication and feedback on her leadership and teaching skills from the graduate nurses in weekly debrief sessions.

LEADERSHIP THEORY:
Nursing is a constantly changing profession, with new nurses being thrust into the work force each year, and with this managers and senior nurses need to develop their leadership skills to facilitate the development of these new nurses. Leadership is explained by Bishop (2013) as a complex dynamic which is constantly changing, and is based on individuals values and circumstances. One such leadership model which bases its leadership theory on a person’s core values is the authentic leadership model. Authentic leadership is an emerging theory with its roots derived from Greek philosophy, with Waite, McKinney, Smith, and Meloy (2014) state it denotes a humanistic stance, with the notion to thine own self be true. Luthans and Avolio (2003, p. 243) define authentic leadership as “a process that draw from positive psychological capactities and highly developed organizational context, this reslts in a greater self-awarness and self-regulated
The essences of authentic leadership is rooted in a persons core and ethical values, with leaders drawing on their own life experiences, psychological capacities to produce a greater self awarness and sef regulated positive behaviours (Wong & Laschinger, 2012). Wong and Cummings (2009) explain that authentic leaders are leaders who have the characteristics of being hopeful, optimistic, resiliant and transparent. With authentic leadership there are four underlying components these are: self-awareness, balanced information processing, authentic beahviour and relational transparency (Wong & Cummings, 2009). Self awarnness is can be defined as “ accepting strengths and weaknesses and being tolerant about their effects on others” (Dirik & Intepeler, 2017, p. p.g 394). Authentic leaders need to have balanced information processing that is where they take into account all the relevant iformation before making a decision. They must also be able to build trust with their followers and share their feeling while encouraging feelings to be shared which is the components of relational transparency. (Dirik &