Emotional Intelligence and Transformational Leadership
Emerging doctoral curricula weave difficult concepts of a new leadership paradigm based on self-awareness. The concept of emotional intelligence has grown in popularity over the past two decades, generating interest both at a social and a professional level. Concurrent developments in nursing relate to the recognition of the impact of self-awareness and reflective practice on the quality of the patient experience and the drive towards evidence-based, patient- centered models of care.
Many curricula now make reference in some way to the notion of an emotionally intelligent practitioner, one for whom theory, practice and research are inextricably bound up with tacit and experiential knowledge. Every nursing intervention is affected by the master aptitude of emotional intelligence. While the rational mind may adequately attend to the necessary technical aspects of nursing procedures, it is not the place of the rational mind to intuitively sense the needs and emotions of the person at the receiving end of care (Freshwater and Stickley, in press).
Bellack (1999) argues for nurses to develop emotional competence if they are to be successful in their working environment. Citing that nurse education fails in the important domain of the emotions, Bellack (1999) calls for nurse educators to examine the role of emotional learning and competencies within the curricula.
The role of nursing education in supporting this development is as yet unclear, although it would appear from the literature that there are some initiatives that specifically aim to explore the link between emotional intelligence and the nursing curricula (Bellack, 1999; Cadman and Brewer, 2001 ; Evans and Allen, 2002).
What is clear is that transformational leaders and professional practitioners require a degree of emotional intelligence to inspire and facilitate movement. Planners of doctoral curricula are urged to be mindful of the power of emotional intelligence when developing innovative and creative ways of delivering teaching and learning at this level.
Balance In Organizations
New concepts for doctoral curricula surround individual development within an organizational context. Organizations seek balance even in the midst of turbulent times. An innovative approach from Bolman and Deal (2001) describes four dualities—caring and power, and authority and significance—that offer balance in an organization.
As individuals in the organization master any of the dualities, opposites that make each other possible, organizations gain harmony and balance. For instance, the dualities of caring and power are described using the Chinese concept of yin and yang. Yin is associated with the more feminine principle for caring and compassion, while the more male principle, yang, describes power with autonomy and influence.
Authorship is connected with individual accomplishment and craftsmanship, while significance surfaces through meaning, unity and pride. These four dualities comprise the spirit of an organization and ignite the unique synergy of a leadership paradigm that can transform the workplace (Bolman and Deal, 2001).
Dualities in Leadership Development
The dualities of caring and power can be further applied to nursing leadership, describing essential skills in a doctoral curriculum. Caring is a core value and unifying force in nursing (Sherwood, 1997). Self-awareness offers inner security for the openness to know the other through listening, understanding and acceptance with presence for one another and caring enough to see the real person.
Trust inspires giving of self. Workers who feel cared about giving caring back to both coworkers and patients in a reciprocal pattern (Bolman and Deal, 2001). Power is perhaps the most difficult concept to convey. Power is not about control but the ability to influence others. Power is particularly important in an educational context.
Faculty must beware of the implicit power that governs much of the student—teacher relationship. This view of power is consistent with dialogic modes of teaching, a mutual process of discovery engaging both teacher and learner, not one in which the teacher exerts undue influence from the threat of evaluation of the student.
Productive empowerment creates a culture of inclusion and participation in the processes affecting staff or faculty and derives from trust, listening, asking questions and knowing what is happening. Together the dualities of authority and significance give workers a connection to their work, contributing to their experience of meaning and purpose.
By encouraging creativity and craftsmanship, staff put signature on their work. Authorship is owning one’s work. The connection to one’s work is essential to satisfaction and renewal. Leaders have the responsibility to create conditions for authority that help people feel they have the power to complete their work and thus feel personally accountable. Autonomy in the workplace offers satisfaction from meaningful accomplishments.
Leaders who let go of control, lead, rather than manage, knowing staff will invest in the outcome through ownership and accountability. Leaders need the ability to coach, mentor, and offer direction to help others learn a framework for making decisions, providing space yet setting boundaries. What are strategies to stimulate worker engagement?
Workers dressed in outcomes gain significance from their work. Leaders who impart significance help employees feel unity, pride and meaning. Significance is at the core of interpersonal relationships and interdependence. Pride arises from the satisfaction of contributing to something of lasting value, of making a difference in the world and from creating outcomes together so that workers are eager to come to work.
Delivery systems, economic pressures and staff shortages diminish significance, leaving healthcare workers feeling dissatisfied even though their work is inherently meaningful. It is the task of the leader to foster significance by ensuring adequate resources, growth opportunities, and involvement at all levels.
Reflective Learning: an Ingredient in Doctoral Curricula
What would a doctoral program look like that fosters transformational leadership? Learners must become involved in the process, not just absorb content. Transformation is changing of worldview, taking on new ways of collecting information, synthesizing and re-contextualizing to find new meanings of one’s work. It is not taking on knowledge as information only, but rather it is taking accountability for one’s learning so that the search becomes one of finding what one needs to know to solve difficult situations, analyze organizational context, or advance nursing knowledge
Discovering Meaning
Meaning derives from reflection on creative work in which one must confront fears, break old patterns and seek self-discovery. It requires reflective evaluation of oneself, looking at one’s potential, preferred direction, repressed hopes and fantasies of the future. Emotionally intelligent workers strive towards self-transcendence by getting outside the self to help others with commitment to a cause greater than the self (Vitello- Cicciu , 2002).
Creating Context
The role of the nurse leader in the healthcare arena is to create context for nursing practice. Leaders share in achieving mission at all levels of the organization, whether in a practice setting or in academia. Purpose-driven workers encounter new situations with new potentials by honoring values and mission. Healthcare constantly balances competing values and demands while honoring mission and ensuring survival, making tough decisions amid tight resources.
Reflection on Action
Other skills required of transformational leaders include reflective practice to enable other practitioners to identify the contradictions between desired practice and actual practice. If doctoral programs are to develop transformational leaders there must be fundamental changes in the thinking, philosophy and delivery of the curriculum or the educational model to include the processes of both reflective practice and critical reflection.
Although most postgraduate courses necessitate a degree of reflective practice, not all of them foster the more indepth and rigorous processes of critical reflection and reflexivity (Freshwater and Rolfe, 2001; Rolfe et al, 2001). Freshwater (2003) defines reflective practice as ‘thinking about your practice,’ with critical reflection requiring that the individual ‘thinks about how they are thinking about their practice.’
That is to say that the practitioner is reflecting upon his or her reflections, while being mindful of the influences of the dominant discourses within which they are operating.
Recognizing, understanding and challenging the ways in which the historical, social, political and ethical context of professional practice is informed by and informs clinical decision-making processes facilitates the development of a leader who models a practitioner/researcher-based approach to improving and developing practice (Freshwater and Rolfe, 2001). Reflection is a problemsolving , intuitive process using interaction and a developmental process leading to transformation to see expectations of self and those in their influence and the larger worldview.
Willing Engagement
Fostering willing engagement is a skill of transformational leaders; they see that quality in others and nurture it. To impart this in a doctoral program, faculty must first model willing engagement in the teaching-learning process. Faculty who are engaged in the scholarly pursuit of nursing become mentors and coaches for willing engagement, inspiring students to likewise invest in their own learning and translate the attitude of willing engagement into their practice.
Transformative leadership connects the leader with those they influence, the knowledge with the leader in a meaningful and purposeful context to move beyond managing things and people to interpretive actions that shift and promote lasting change. This goes beyond techniques and how-to, delving into deeper reflection on the meaning and vision of the whole of their work. Transformative leaders inherently connect with the meaning and purpose of their work.
Finding the Internal Compass
In order to connect with the meaning and purpose of their work, doctoral candidates initially need to focus on the self through reflective practice. Reestablishing and re-evaluating their own personal internalized beliefs, values and norms to define and describe their own philosophical stance towards nursing practice and indeed, practical improvement and leadership. Leadership then begins with the self, using reflective practice to locate the internal compass by which the practitioner is guided (Freshwater, 2003).
That inner core of being, called the internal compass, guides and directs actions and practices, fueled from one’s values and spirituality of meaning. When it becomes the central voice of a person, it is the inspiration for greatness and ‘doing the right thing’. Although reflection on the self is an important feature of doctoral level education, it must always be done within the context of others.
This is to say that reflection, when used with critical intent, is a dialogic process and in this sense doctoral education enables the individual to move between the universal and the particular (Freshwater, 2002). The role of the doctoral educator shifts from one that supplies knowledge in a didactic manner, in which the learner is passively part of the educational process.
The doctoral educator moves into a participatory style of teaching, coaching, and mentoring, in which the learner becomes a partner, building on previous knowledge and skills. As teacher and learner work together, the process becomes dialogic as the student drives his or her own learning.
The path will vary for each student as they move through the discovery and understanding of their own learning needs, building from their foundation uncovered from reflection. This journey of the self becomes a critical aspect of the transformation journey in doctoral education as the learner dwells on their own way of practicing, being, and doing in a dynamic continuum of growth and development.
Where reflective learning can herald a movement towards professional artistry, and the ability to respond spontaneously to complex and often contradictory sets of circumstances, change and transformation are the main intent of critical reflection and reflexivity. These skills are linked to mindfulness: presence/attentiveness to the moment and the concept of willingness/engagement, and to creating a healthy, nurturing but challenging working environment.
Conclusion
What goes into doctoral education that promotes or enables transformation, the changing of worldview and ability to lead in a dynamic way? Changes in healthcare delivery, advances in information sharing, the technological revolution, societal changes and development in organizational theory combine to drive the necessity of new leadership models.
Expectations in the workplace, whether practice settings or academia, have shifted leadership from transactional to transformative models, emphasizing the journey of self-awareness as a central concept. Doctoral education prepares leaders concerned with analysis of the context of nursing practice, and thus, is driven by the need to provide a new generation of leaders.
The emergence of transformational leadership meets the needs of the workers at all levels of the organization, offering meaning and purpose necessary for satisfaction and retention, outcomes that are critical for achieving the organization’s mission.
Read More: https://nurseseducator.com/transformation-of-leadership-in-nursing-education/