A collage for reflection : the changing faces of nursing leadership

Inaugural lecture--Nursing Department, University of Johannesburg, 15 June 2011@@Different leadership faces need to evolve in order to progress from an individualistically focused towards a socially responsive leadership style. Nurse leaders need to reflect on the application of their leadership approaches in their different sectors. These sectors are vastly diverse in character, governance and magnitude; are faced with competing needs and expectations from a multitude of stakeholders and followers; and they also vary in the scope of tasks. The expectations in the SA healthcare environment highlight demands for nurses to exemplify a clear vision. The most recent vision for nursing had been quantified at the Nursing Summit during April 2011: “Reconstruction and revitalising the nursing profession”. This vision embraces the quest of changing the current “face” of nursing leadership. Leadership deals with finding the balance between power, authority and influence during a particular set of circumstances. The face of individualistic, inaugurated leadership refers to distinctly established leadership that focuses on self-reflection, reflection leadership, reflective practice and hostmanship. Reflective leadership is a way of approaching leadership tasks and leading one's own life with foresight and personal mastery. Self-leadership refers to the ways in which people influence themselves to continuously improve their knowledge, skills, acumen, self-motivation and self-direction. These qualities are needed to behave in desirable ways. When service and thoughtfulness are abundantly applied, hostmanship gets amplified by the leader’s desire to achieve, to be proactive, and to seize the opportunity to influence other people. Servant leadership becomes the mirror that magnifies the face of collective leadership while the face of individual inaugurated leadership fades into distant memory. Assemblage leadership refers to the face of shared, collective and relational leadership. There is a growing recognition of the need for individual leaders to embrace the unleashing of collective leadership capacity and to understand diversity. It is vitally important for establishing a shared purpose and vision, as well as for creating relational capacity to effectively coordinate actions. The leadership face of systems reflection; by means of super, ethical and quantum leadership; allows the leader to be certain about the importance of integrated systems in order to support what the leader is planning to accomplish and to understand the interdependencies of such systems. Lastly, nursing should focus on socially responsive leadership by giving deliberate direction with the intent of benefiting everyone in society.