By Rose O. Sherman, RN, EdD, NEA-BC, FAAN
We know that nurse leaders play a key role in both staff recruitment and retention. Your success today in being the type of leader that is a magnet for nurses hinges on your willingness to change your approach to leadership and develop new skills. Being a manager is no longer enough. Younger nurses want to get ahead in their careers and expect to be coached on how to do this. Coaching is now an essential part of a leadership toolbox.
Becoming a leader coach requires a shift in mindset from a traditional manager role who is primarily performance focused to coach who also looks for opportunities to foster professional growth. Many nurse leaders are not comfortable in the coaching role. They are so used to giving advice. But coaches don’t do this but instead refrain from jumping in to solve the problems of others, and instead helping them to discover their own solutions. Using an evidenced-based coaching framework recommended by the International Federation of Coaches can provide guidance on how to coach staff. The model is called GROW.
G – is for goal setting as a first step. While this may seem counterintuitive, most nurses that you will coach know what they want. They have a goal for themselves in mind but no path to get there.
R – is for reality. What is the reality of the current situation? What actions have already been taken?
O – is for options. What are the possibilities, strategies and alternatives?
W – is for what you will do to determine a course of action. What are the obstacles and how committed are you?
I recently spoke with a critical care manager named Kate. Kate wanted some advice on what to do in order to help her assistant nurse manager. This assistant had recently finished her master’s degree and was looking to move up to a nurse manager position. They work in a small health system with no current manager vacancies and very little turnover. I advised Kate to coach her assistant manager using the GROW model providing the current situation as an example.
G – the goal her assistant manager had was to move into a nurse manager role. She was open to moving outside her specialty area and even her own hospital to do this. She wanted to remain in the health system.
R – the reality as Kate explained it to me was that these positions rarely opened up in this health system and none of the current managers were close to retirement. The Assistant Nurse Manager had already met with the CNO who was encouraging but could give her no guarantees or timeline. The Assistant Nurse Manager had also taken the step of getting her graduate degree which did better position her for the role when a vacancy occurred.
O – the options in this situation for the Assistant Manager to immediately achieve her goal appear limited. She could of course seek the role outside her own health system. She could also offer to assume leadership for a major initiative or taskforce which would enhance her leadership skills. There were multiple other alternatives Kate could think of as we talked.
W – Kate will have to work through this situation with her Assistant Manager to determine what she will choose to do, what she perceives the obstacles to be and how committed she is moving forward to implementing discussed initiatives.
Coaching is a collaborative relationship undertaken between the coach and the nurse. It uses conversations to help the nurse achieve their goals. Moving from being the problem solver in chief to a coach takes practice. Listening, reflecting on what you hear and sense, and then asking powerful questions can actually change how a person sees themselves and the world around them.
Reference
Whitmore, J. (2017). Coaching for performance. Boston: Hachette Book Group.
© emergingrnleader.com 2018
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