How to Foster Leadership Skills in Nursing: 5 Tips for Facilities

The nursing profession is heavily dependent on teamwork. As such, nurses rely on their leaders to promote a healthy work culture and provide the resources they need to succeed. Thus, nurturing leadership skills in nursing is essential for sustaining a workforce that delivers high quality care. While some of these skills are taught in school, the workplace is where nurses actually engage in real-world experiences that shape them into successful leaders.

This means facility leaders must work diligently to foster leadership within their organizations. The following five tips for supporting leadership growth among your nursing staff will help you build the strongest care teams possible.

What Skills Are Necessary to Be a Strong Nurse Leader?

Before you implement strategies to foster leadership skills in nursing, it’s important to understand what qualities a strong leader exudes. According to experts, there are five key attributes and examples of leadership in nursing:

• Effective Communication: Leaders must understand how to actively listen and communicate with their staff to build cohesive teamwork.

• Clinical Competence: Leaders should have a solid grasp of clinical care standards so that they can teach and guide their staff appropriately.

• Approachability: Staff should feel comfortable going to their leaders for any questions and concerns so any issues can be proactively addressed.

• Role Modeling Behavior: Leaders should exemplify the principles, values, and attitudes that they want to instill within their teams.

• Providing Support: Providing a supportive and nurturing hand is essential for helping staff grow and succeed.

Beyond these examples of clinical leadership in nursing, being a good leader means committing to improving an organization and motivating others to do the same. All these skills are learned and acquired over time — starting at the moment nurses enter their workplace for the first time.

5 Tips to Foster Leadership Skills in Nursing

Developing effective nurse leadership skills is often done through gaining hands-on experiences at work. Because of this, facilities should provide resources that enhance the learning already occurring on the floor. Below are five ways you can reinforce the strengths of your staff and help bring out their best leadership qualities.

1. Provide Continuous Learning Opportunities

In order to develop the clinical competence needed to be a leader, nurses must continuously build on their knowledge and apply new skills in practice. While a lot of this is done in their day-to-day work, it’s important for facilities to provide ancillary learning opportunities that support skill development. You can promote continuous learning by:

• Offering free skill-building workshops.
• Covering continuing education (CE) credits.
• Providing periodic in-service training for new care protocols.

2. Implement Peer Mentorship Programs

Studies have shown that strong mentorship is pivotal to helping nurses build confidence and develop leadership skills. Peer-to-peer mentorship sometimes occurs naturally, but it never hurts to take additional measures to promote a more collegial environment.

Consider creating a formal mentorship program by pairing more experienced nurses with newer hires. Not only does this provide a nurturing environment for new nurses, but it also helps senior nurses learn how to support their colleagues. Follow these tips to set your mentorship programs up for success:

• Assign mentors based on experience, availability, and interests.
• Designate a mentor coordinator who can help introduce mentors and mentees.
• Periodically check in with staff about the program to see if anything should be changed.

3. Encourage Professional Development Activities

Beyond developing clinical competence, strong leaders must stay committed to bettering all aspects of the work environment. This includes the work culture, care policies, and governing structures that keep the facility running smoothly.

Thus, it’s important to encourage nurses to acquire a well-rounded interest in facilitating the organization’s overall performance. This can be done by encouraging nurses to engage in the following activities and programs:

• Professional development workshops
• Quality improvement initiatives and conferences
• Clinical career ladder programs

4. Promote a Transparent Work Culture

While nurses become adept at interacting with patients over time, the work culture can greatly influence how they learn to communicate with colleagues. Thus, promoting transparency within your team can help foster the communication skills needed to be a strong leader. Here are a few ways you can work to promote a more transparent work culture:

• Have an open-door policy allowing staff to reach you whenever necessary.
• Hold regular team meetings and encourage staff to openly discuss concerns.
• Structure shorter daily check-ins, such as safety huddles, to promote cohesive teamwork.

5. Lead by Example

Studies have shown that leadership skills are commonly acquired through reflective modeling. This means your nursing staff are passively observing what you do and embodying the same principles that you display toward your team. As a leader yourself, it’s important to exhibit the behaviors that you want your staff to recognize and model to others.

Learn More Ways to Effectively Manage Your Nursing Team

Looking for accessible resources to hone your own leadership skills in nursing? IntelyCare is here to help. Our team of nurses provides free and expert insights on how facility leaders can foster the strongest care teams possible.