Maintaining Situational Humility

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

 

2022 has barely begun and nurse leaders find themselves struggling to stay on top of nurse illnesses, childcare issues, and positive COVID tests as the Omicron virus barrels through the country at breakneck speed. I interviewed a nurse manager the other day who told an interesting story about their first nursing leadership meeting in 2022.

We met last week as a leadership team to look at where we are with staffing and how to best cope with this latest challenge with Omicron. One of our newest managers asked our CNO about the pathway out of the endless challenges we see today in nursing. Our CNO said – I don’t know. You may think that as a CNO, I should have the answers but I don’t in this situation. Then she flipped the question to the group and asked what we thought about pathways out. It actually led to some of the best conversations that we have ever had as a leadership team. 

The CNO in this story was practicing a powerful leadership strategy called situational humility. We all pride ourselves on our leadership expertise but there are limits to what we can know especially in situations like the present. Situational humility was coined by Harvard Professor Amy Edmondson. She describes situational humility as a willingness to transparently acknowledge the gaps in our knowledge and remain relentlessly curious about the opinions of others. It leads to better outcomes in uncertain situations because the leader creates psychological safety for others to share their ideas. A leader who practices situational humility seeks to know what they don’t know about situations.

Edmondson observes that situational humility is strangely rare in organizations. Leaders believe they are paid for their expertise so they sometimes err on the side of being overly certain about situations to the point of arrogance.  Edmonson introduces what she describes as “the basic human problem: it’s hard to learn if you already know.”

I can’t think of a time in nursing when we have needed to maintain situational humility more than we do right now. I have had discussions with some senior nursing leaders who describe what they are seeing as another cyclical nursing shortage. The solution, they contend, is to pull together a commission or task force to make recommendations. That is what we have always done – bring together the “experts” and solve the problem. There is a lack of curiosity about what is really happening at the frontline of care and how nurses today view their work and their future. We think we know what is happening but maybe we don’t.

Frontline nurse leaders are far more likely to admit that they don’t know what to do because tried and true leadership strategies often don’t work today.  They paint a much more nuanced picture of nursing with many frequently telling me – I am seeing things today in my leadership career that I have never seen before and I am not sure what these changes might mean in the long term. 

Many leaders want to control everything. But some things can’t be known upfront or beforehand. You have to know when to take charge–or when to let go and seek out better information. This requires keeping an open mind and staying curious for just a little longer by maintaining situational humility.

Read to Lead

Edmondson, A. (2018). The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth. Boston: Harvard Press.