Choosing Your Battles Wisely in a Turbulent Time

By Rose O. Sherman, Ed.D, RN, NEA-BC, FAAN

I recently had a non-nurse friend ask me why nurse leaders are not demanding that their nursing staff take the vaccine. This friend is horrified that nurses have gone on camera to discuss their anti-vaccine viewpoints and damage the educational outreach on vaccine education. He pointed out that these nurses are placing themselves in an unsafe situation, and patients who come in contact with them as variants of the virus become widespread. He is right on many levels, and in the best of all possible worlds – nurses would willingly take the vaccine. But the truth is that we are not in the best of all possible worlds, and nurse leaders know they need to choose their political battles wisely.  If 40% of your nursing staff in a safety-net hospital refuse the vaccine (a true case) – can you really demand that they do when you are already extremely short-staffed, and your labor contract lacks clarity about the issue.

This is just one of the many political battles that nurse leaders face during these turbulent times. Each of us in our leadership role has only a finite amount of time. While you may want to battle through every conflict because you feel you are “right,” battles can take an enormous amount of time and personal energy.  There are times when we need to ask ourselves whether we have real power to change the situation and if there is a strong likelihood that we can reverse the problem with our involvement. If the answer is no, it might be better to pass on the battle. Sometimes we can win a battle but end up losing the war.

If a nurse leader were to fight the vaccine battle with staff aggressively, there would need to be a total organizational commitment to the position. Understanding how this or any battle is viewed in an organization is crucial to assess whether the outcomes will be worth the relationships that might get damaged through arguments. Just being right may not be enough to invest. Is this battle even worth your time? As a leader, you do not have an unlimited supply of social capital and goodwill in your organization, so it is vital to use it wisely.

Your leadership battles can either be dealt with now or left alone and accepted as part of the present moment, which could change. Ideally, as leaders, we would love a conflict-free organization where these battles never happen, but this is unrealistic. In these situations, the most powerful weapon we have is control over our own behavior. Carefully choosing your battles may ultimately prove to be much wiser than fighting through every organizational disagreement.