How To Become The Leader Your Staff Deserves 

Are you interested in taking your nursing career to the next level? Are you ready to become a leader? What kind of leader would you be?

Every great organization needs effective leaders—people who can inspire their staff and peers alike. Most organizations are on the hunt for excellent leadership talent. The lack of great leaders will inevitably put a strain on the organization’s ability to perform successfully and support ongoing growth.

Good Leadership Is Critical To Employee Retention

Employees will often leave their place of employment because of a lack of good leaders. No one wants to work in a place where it seems like everyone on is stressed and running around like ‘chickens with their heads cut off.’ As a leader, you set the tone, and the tone you set is critical to staff satisfaction, which trickles down to customers.

How Do You Become A Better Leader?

Anyone can become a better, more successful, and more effective leader. Here are some practices to help you step into your first-time leadership role.

Hold A Team-Based Vision.

Set a vision for everyone around you in the workplace and align activities with that concept every single day. Where would you like your organization to go? What are your employees interested in achieving? What is the department’s goal? Help your employees see that vision as well by communicating it regularly.

Organization Is Key

As a new leader, you will have to balance many priorities—so you must organize your daily task and unit goals based on what is immediate.

Without your priorities in check, you’ll wind up investing critical time on trivial undertakings. Before you take action, identify high-level goals: assess needs, engage staff, and then connect the dots to achieve that goal.

Leverage Your Passion To Motivate Your Team

You’ll be surprised to see your team become increasingly effective as you lead with passion, enthusiasm, and inclusivity. This approach will inspire commitment and make everyone’s individual goals the organization’s purpose.

Encourage Your Employees To Have A Voice And Speak Their Mind

Everyone has a voice (two eyes and a brain. Ha!). Allow employees to contribute ideas. Help your employees feel heard by actively listening to their grievances, and most importantly, their ideas!

Create A Safe Environment

Cultivate a workplace where employees feel it is safe to voice an opinion. Show them that critical thinking leads to progression, and it is GREATLY encouraged!

Perhaps you can hold weekly brainstorm meetings to generate new ideas and create a culture of open communications and commitment. Plus, it will boost your staff members self-esteem. 

Give Them Autonomy

Let your team do their job. It sounds harsh. I know. Most first-time leaders have a hard time delegating and would naturally like to get things done for themselves. However, figuring out how to delegate is a significant part of leadership. It controls empowers your group to accomplish objectives faster, achieve preferred outcomes, and reach new heights.

Always Communicate. And Communicate CLEARLY

Excellent communication is a central component of effective leadership. Your team seeks you out for direction. If your team can’t comprehend what is expected of them; they won’t realize what to do, and execution will be sloppy. Clear, direct, and straight forward communication improves the probability that individual team members will grasp your intention and take the right course of action. It’s smarter to over-emphasize than to leave room for misconception.

Successful Leaders See and Bring Out Greatness in Others 

Bottom line: Your Job as a leader is to enable your employees to evolve into a dream team of only top players.