Becoming a Leader with Impact - Emerging Nurse Leader

By Rose O. Sherman, EdD, RN, FAAN

Jeff Bezos the founder of Amazon once commented that your personal brand is what people say about you after you leave the room. All of us want to believe that as leaders we will have impact. But this is not a given and to have impact, we must be intentional in our leadership. In their book Be a Person of Impact, authors Jackie and Kevin Freiberg suggest that leaders should ask themselves the following questions:

When you attend a meeting or have a phone call scheduled on an important topic, are you better prepared than anyone else?
Do people applaud your sense of urgency and responsiveness to requests?
Do you take creativity and execution to the next level?
Do you try to figure out where your organization is headed strategically so you can position yourself and staff to respond to the changes?
Are you willing to tackle challenges or take on initiatives that no one else wants?
When you talk to patients do learn as much as you can about them so you will understand your market?
Do you have a reputation of doing your homework when you make presentations or bring forward requests?
Do you go above and beyond?
Do you hold yourself accountable for what you agree to do?
Do you ask for feedback and seek self-awareness of how you are being perceived as a leader?

Impactful leaders understand the need to stretch their minds through reading and discussions with others. They focus on being connoisseurs in their areas of expertise and understand that “busyness” in and of itself does not make one productive. An impactful leader is one who dares to try and is open to the new ideas brought forth by staff. Thinking one has the answers all the time or being right is highly over-rated.

Great communication is the key to high impact leadership. Simplifying the message so it is understood and focusing on “saying what you mean, meaning what you say but never saying it mean.” It is very easy to become discouraged with the complexity and chaos that we often see in the environment. Impactful leaders work hard to have a constructive explanatory style that conveys hope and optimism. Negative thoughts can be toxic and quickly turn impact environments of care. All of us will occasionally have bad news that we need to learn to shake off and move on. To have impact, we need to focus instead on how to enrich our lives and the lives of others. We all need to be reminded of why we do what we do – which the Freibergs describe as our big YES.

Read to Lead

Freiberg, J. & Freiberg, K. (2015). Be a Person of Impact: 12 Strategies to be the CEO of Your Future. Published by the San Diego Consulting Group.