Developing Your Emerging Leaders - Emerging Nurse Leader

By Rose O. Sherman, EdD, RN, FAAN

It is a familiar story that I hear from experienced leaders…….“I hire a new graduate and within one year, they believe they are ready to take a leadership role but I don’t think they are ready and tell them so……next thing I know, they are moving on to another position to develop their careers.”

Yet if we want to develop leadership skills in our younger staff, we must sometimes step aside, let go of our biases and help them to develop their leadership. Telling them that it is “not your time” may kill any future enthusiasm that they might have about taking leadership roles. Even more important, our young Generation Y nurses highly value developmental opportunities. Research evidence tells us that if they are not given these opportunities – they are more likely than any other generation to leave their employers. We want them in the words of Sheryl Sandburg at Facebook to Lean into Leadership. When young nurses approach their leaders with a goal to become a nurse leader, experience bias might lead that leader to say that it is too soon. This response is especially discouraging. A better idea is to help our young nurses to develop a plan to grow their leadership.

Ten Suggestions to Help our Emerging Nurse Leaders Grow their Leadership

1. Help Them to Find a Mentor

All of us can benefit from mentors who can help use to learn and grow. Young nurses may not know where to turn or who to ask. As an experience leader, you can guide them as to who might be a good resource to help them develop as leaders.

2. Encourage Them to Identify their Strengths

Books such as Discover Your Strengths and Strengths Based Leadership include online assessments can help young nurses to see where their strengths lie and what type of leadership roles might be good fits for them.

3. Send Them to Charge Nurse Development Programs

If your organization has charge nurse development programs and you have young staff interested in leadership, consider sending them to these classes so they can learn and grow. They will then be ready when leadership opportunities present themselves.

4. Use Them as Preceptors for New Staff and Students

It may sound counterintuitive to use some of your least experienced nurses as preceptors but research by authors such as Patricia Benner indicates that experts often don’t make the best preceptors. Younger staff with less experience are sometimes better at explaining the step by step processes of how things are done on the unit. Serving as a preceptor also provides opportunities to learn how to coach and mentor and these are key skills in leadership.

5. Suggest Participation in a Professional Association

Professional associations can be a great place for young nurses to begin to develop leadership skills. Organizations are always looking for members to assume leadership roles and it provides young nurses with an opportunity to learn networking which is a key leadership skill.

6. Select Them to Serve on Shared-Governance Councils and Task Forces

Participation on councils and task forces are an excellent way for new leaders to learn about meeting management skills, staff engagement in work, organizational structures and the politics that accompany any decision making. With the tight budget limitations that many organizations have – some of this may need to be done on personal time.

7. Give Them Suggestions for Free Reading Materials to Develop their Leadership

There are many excellent free materials that emerging nurse leaders can use to learn more about leadership. This blog could be a good resource as are Leadership Ted Talks, a free subscription to Fierce Healthcare and podcasts such as those posted weekly by the Harvard Business Review.

8. Challenge Them to do a Leadership Development Action Plan

It is often said that goals are more likely to be achieved when they are written down and include timeframes. Challenge emerging nurse leaders to develop at least three goals for themselves with activities to achieve their goals. This is great practice for when they become a leader because leadership is a never ending journey.

9. Provide Feedback on their Leadership Growth

Young Generation Y nurses crave feedback. Offer to review their action plan and give them some feedback on their goals and the development that you see in them. You may have some specific suggestions about how they can improve their leadership such as becoming more willing to confront conflict.

10. Offer an Opportunity for Them to Shadow You on a Day Off

Early in their practice, nurses often have little understanding about the role of the leader. Some organizations permit leaders to allow staff to shadow them so they can observe the range of activities their leaders are involved in. This can be a very eye-opening experience for an emerging nurse leader.

Significant numbers of Baby-Boomer nurse leaders are now beginning to retire. We could see a large number of leadership vacancies happen within a short range of time. The time is now to begin working with our emerging nurse leaders so they are ready. Having some very specific suggestions about how to get started in leadership is a great first step and one that will earn you loyalty as a manager interested in career development.