Will Fear of Failure Drive Younger Nurses from Leadership Roles?

By Rose O. Sherman, EdD, RN, FAAN

For the past three decades, nursing has been led by nurses in the Baby Boomer cohort born between 1946 and 1960. This is now rapid shifting with the three million Baby Boomers turning 65 each year and many beginning to retire. Recruitment to replace retiring nurse leaders is expected to be challenging. In fact, some nurse leaders are already experiencing low numbers of applicants for leadership roles. By 2020, more than 50% of the nursing workforce will be Generation Y nurses born after 1980. These nurses are the future of nursing leadership but the million dollar question today is whether they will be interested and/or prepared to step into leadership roles. Learning how to effectively recruit, motivate and retain Generation Y nurse leaders will be critical to the future of nursing.

In recent research conducted with Generation Y nurses, our investigative team learned Generation Y nurses see the value and importance of nursing leadership in making a difference in patient care. They do worry about the level of support that will be available to them as they assume these roles and whether they could fail. Their top six concerns about taking a leadership role include the following:

Fear of failure
Work-life stress
Lack of Job security
Too much responsibility
Need to please everyone
Loss of clinical skills

As one young nurse observed, “Organizations have high expectations of leaders and very low tolerance if goals are not met. When nurse leaders fail – it is very public failure and sometimes not even the total responsibility of the leader. Many things can and do go wrong but people want to hold someone responsible.” This concern about failure and an accompanying need for a high level of administrative support is not something that we see in the literature about nurse succession planning. Yet, it is consistent Generational research which tells us that performance feedback is important to this generation, and some of it stems from their high anxiety level and fear of failure. While anecdotally, we hear about overconfidence in Generation Y, the American Psychological Association data indicates that they are the most stressed out generation.

In order to do more effective succession planning, a better understanding is needed about what will motivate Generation Y nurses to become leaders. We also need to understand the environmental factors that could prove challenging in their willingness to accept leadership responsibilities. This worry about fear of failure deserves our attention. If our nurse leader roles don’t appear to have a high level of administration support and nurturing, we may find that our Generation Y nurses may just say no to leadership opportunities.