Key Skills for Future Nurse Executives

By Rose O. Sherman, EdD, RN, NEA-BC, FAAN

One of the challenges in leadership development is to design programs and experiences that will prepare emerging leaders for a future that could look very different from our current environment. In an important new article in Hospital and Health Networks The Rapidly Evolving Role of Nurse Executives, author Laurie Larson went to the experts for their thoughts and opinions. Nurses are increasing assuming a wide range of executive leadership roles beyond the traditional CNO role. It is recognized that nurse leaders bring a unique — and increasingly valuable — perspective from which to champion these efforts, from the bedside to the top of the leadership ladder. The 2017 AHA Guide to the Healthcare Field reports that there are now more than 3800 nurses in Chief Nursing Officer roles alone.

Bonnie Clipper, R.N., chief clinical officer of Cornerstone Hospital Austin (Texas), and a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation executive nurse fellow was interviewed and reported five crucial evolving competencies for nurse leaders: influencing innovation, spanning boundaries, collaboration, expanding the accessibility and use of technology and, perhaps particularly important, courage. Other nurse leaders interviewed discussed the importance of becoming an effective collaborator as most work is now done on teams and managing the massive amounts of data for effective decision support. Maureen Swick, the CEO of AONE, pointed out the importance of strong financial skills to understand the new payment models and healthcare costs.

Innovation – A Key Competency

The innovation competency has proved challenging for many nurse leaders. Bonnie and a team of RWJ foundation nurse executive fellows developed an innovation roadmap. To be an effective innovator, leaders must foster, model and reward the following key behaviors:

Divergent thinking. Such thinking allows a specific problem to be addressed by considering and connecting seemingly unrelated matters and ideas to its solution.
Failure tolerance. Understanding that the road to success is often paved with many failures along the way, health care leaders must tolerate failure as the only way to encourage and support innovative risk-taking behaviors among their staff.
Agility and flexibility. The ability to adjust swiftly to global market changes defines agility. Flexibility is its natural partner in achieving those rapid adjustments.
Risk-taking. This means engaging in behaviors that involve risk in order to achieve a goal. Divergent thinking often may create ideas or projects that seem risky to undertake.
Autonomy and freedom. When employees are given the autonomy to do their work as they see fit, this trust and freedom give them more confidence in their abilities and decisions, which may give them more willingness to continue to pursue innovative solutions for the organization.

The future looks very bright for emerging leaders interested in executive roles. But and this is a big but – you must be willing to be a continuous learning and embrace new skills and competencies such as those discussed in this blog.