What is Followership and Mentorship for Nursing Leadership and Management. Follower problems manifest themselves in poor work ethic, low morale, goal confusion, dissatisfied customers, missed opportunities, high costs, poor product quality, and low competitiveness.
The Followership and Mentorship for Nursing Leadership and Management
Followership is defined as the role people play in supporting, promoting, and implementing the vision and goals of their leaders. This role is essential in healthcare, as it promotes effective team dynamics and the delivery of healthcare services.
Nurses perform various administrative and managerial functions: personnel and financial management. They make hiring and firing decisions. They also organize staff training, promote professional development, and prepare budgets.
Action Initiative: Leadership means initiating actions, making decisions, and leading the way for others. Followership means understanding and embracing the leader’s vision, providing support, and contributing to the achievement of shared goals.
If you haven’t read these topics in a while, I encourage you to refresh your memory about what is expected of us as leaders. Robert Kelley’s article “In Praise of Followers” describes five types of followers: effective followers, survivors, alienated followers, sheeple followers, and sycophants. A conceptual model titled “Following as Trust in Critical Care Nursing Teams” illustrates that nurses’ decisions to trust (and subsequently follow) depend on burden sharing (understanding, accepting, and collaborating with one’s role) and demonstrating knowledge.
Followership is important in the discussion of leadership for several reasons. Without followers, there are no leaders. For a project or organization to be successful, there must be people willing to follow willingly and effectively, as well as people willing to lead willingly and effectively.The five most influential leadership styles in nursing are transformational, democratic-democratic, laissez-faire, autocratic, and servant leadership.
The nurse’s role is to care for others, from supporting basic physical needs to developing and reviewing systems to improve the holistic care of the communities they serve. The goals of nursing management include promoting an effective social life for nurses, bringing the community closer to the school/university, preparing nurses for specialized roles, and supporting them in the development of their personality and philosophy.
Other qualities that nurses value in their leaders include a drive for excellence, passion for their work, a clear vision and strategic direction, trustworthiness, respect, accessibility, empathy, caring, and a commitment to staff training and development. These qualities are essential for exceptional leadership. The theory emphasizes followers’ education, experience, and work knowledge. Followers as designers of leadership: In theories that present leadership as cognitively or socially constructed by followers, followers are assigned a much more central and explicit role.
Followership
An integral part of leadership is the concept of followership. Where would a leader be without followers? An un-savvy leader may possibly view his or her followers as an identical, like-minded group of individuals who will blindly and without criticism execute the leader’s objectives (Frisina, 2005); followers then become seen as a mindless herd. A Freudian approach to followership focused on the dysfunctional (disruptive) follower (e.g., impulsive, compulsive, masochistic, or withdrawn sub ordinate) (Zaleznik, 1965).
In contrast, an exemplary follower has the right to decide whether he or she follows the leader (Kelley, 1992). Several leadership theories previously discussed address the relationship between leaders and followers (team members), but with the conceptual lens that the leader bears the responsibility for the relationship.
One study presented the concept that leadership is a co-construction of the leader and followers, and researchers found that “leaders are sometimes followers, and vice versa, suggesting that follow ing and leading are interdependent activities to be found in both groups: leaders and followers” (Kean, Haycock-Stuart, Baggaley, & Carson, 2011, p. 515). Following can fall into the categories of “doing following,” “standing by,” or “resisting following” (Kean et al., 2011, p. 515).
In essence, those in the “doing following” group represent positive role models and potentially could be groomed for leadership. The “standing by” group member is someone who is participating in the group but responds best with detailed guidance. The “resisting following” group member would appear to bring negative energy to the group dynamic. It is this last team member who potentially distracts from the performance of the team. A leader with the ability to assess types of followers could either provide opportunities of improvement for his or her team members or provide consequences for their actions, when appropriate.
There has been much discussion of what it takes to be a good or even a great leader, but what makes a good follower? Just as the commonly held belief claims that good leadership can improve quality and safety, it is becoming clear that good followership also affects quality and safety (Whitlock, 2013). Followers are not passive participants who go along for the ride. It is also imperative that a follower does not undermine the goals of a leader. This can create not only a hostile work environment but also an unsafe one. As with leaders, there is more known now about what constitutes a good follower.
A good follower is a member of the team who contributes to the success of the organization. As with leadership skills, followership skills can be learned and developed. The good follower can interpret the overt and subtle objectives and adjust his or her work behavior to provide the best results for the organization’s improvement of quality and safety. Followers can also be broken down into four types:
1) effective or exemplary
2) alienated
3) conformist
4) passive
(Kelley, 1992, p. 97).
Along with these general characteristics, the behavioral attributes of passiveness versus activeness and independent critical thinking versus dependent uncritical thinking tie into types of followers. For example, the effective or exemplary follower is an active participant who functions independently while using critical thinking, and a passive follower shows passiveness and is a dependent, uncritical thinker. No matter the type of follower, it is important to recognize the significant role that the follower plays within the organization or team.
Nurses, as part of the health-care team, must take their position very seriously, whether it is as primary leader or primary follower within a given time and circumstance. A good leader recognizes opportunities to adjust roles from leader to follower fluidly and has an understanding that followership enhances team functioning. Leaders must always remember that followers wield tremendous influence in an organization.
Effective followers engage in healthy dialogue with leaders, whereas ineffective followers dialogue in a manner that can result in unsafe or unhealthy situations, thus resulting in organizational chaos. A nurse leader and manager can use an effective follower to better the team. For example, a savvy leader or manager will pair a new hire with a preceptor who is a part of the “doing following” group. This ensures that the new team member will be exposed to proper policies and procedures and encourages a positive, rapid start.
Mentoring Ship
Across all industries, mentoring and apprenticeships have always been primary tools of training. Mentorship in nursing developed over time from the traditional apprenticeship-style approach to a less formal process in which two people engage in a relationship designed to support the growth and development of the less experienced party. As nurse leaders and managers grow and mature, mentoring relationships will change. An understanding of the roles of mentor and mentee are important in leadership.
A leader may at any time be both a mentor to less experienced nurses and a mentee in a relationship to foster his or her own growth and development. Nurse leaders and managers are charged with mentoring “colleagues for the advancement of nursing practice, the profession, and quality health care” (ANA, 2016, p. 52).
In the role of mentor, a nurse leader and manager focus on the exchange of information to assist the mentee in advancing clinical competencies, research skills, or leadership abilities, depending on the predetermined needs established within the mentoring relationship (Mc.Cloughen, O’Brien, & Jackson, 2009). A mentee seeking to advance in leadership must embrace open-minded dialogues with other nurse leaders and managers. It is within these relationships that a mentee can experience the inside view of an organization and develop a more in-depth understanding of system functioning.
Nursing as a profession benefits from mentoring relationships by ensuring continued growth of future nursing leaders as well as ensuring continuity of highly skilled workers. Because the nursing workforce is aging, it is imperative that more experienced leaders pass on their knowledge and skills. Nurse leaders and managers are often in positions to function as mentors and can teach mentees the finer arts of nursing, such as inter-professional collaboration and teamwork.
Mentoring brings benefits of increased job satisfaction, higher nurse retention, and professional advancement (Barker, Sullivan & Emery, 2006). When nurse leaders are supported in mentoring new nurses to create healthy work environments, some of the burden of supervision of new nurses is lifted from the manager.
Summary
All nurses are leaders and managers regardless of practice setting. Leaders are neither strictly born nor created. Research into leadership and management theories, both historical and contemporary, offers many clues to the successful characteristics of effective nurse leaders and managers. Health care today is constantly evolving and requires nurses to embrace leadership roles to ensure high-quality care.
Nurse leaders and managers will be challenged to stay abreast of the constantly evolving health-care system while simultaneously increasing patient and staff satisfaction and quality care. Knowledge of leadership theories offers a perspective and guide for leading and managing, and in particular, transformational leadership has been identified as an effective style to meet today’s ever-changing health-care system. Nurse leaders and managers must develop the key leadership characteristics of self-awareness and emotional intelligence to lead and manage today.
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