By Rose O. Sherman, EdD, RN, NEA-BC, FAAN
In a just-released whitepaper, The Great Generational Shift, Bruce Tulgan (a generational theorist and expert) points out that supportive leadership is ranked as the number one job factor that Generation Z (born between 1997 to present) will use in assessing employment options. With a tightening job market, having great leaders will become a competitive advantage for any organization. Yet, achieving this will not be easy because the time demands on the contemporary leader continue to increase. In a 2019 OR Manager survey as an example, OR leaders now report that they supervise an average of 139 FTE with a year over year increase since 2015 when it was 95.
Tulgan defines a supportive leader as one who is highly engaged with staff assuming a leadership approach that seems to align with servant leadership. The fundamentals and actions would include the folowing:
The Fundamentals of Highly-Engaged Management
The Basics
1. Get in the habit of managing every day
2. Take it one person at a time
3. Talk like a performance coach
How It’s Done
4. Make accountability a real process
5. Tell people what to do and how to do it
6. Track performance at every step
The Payoff
7. Solve small problems, before they become big ones
8. Do more for some and less for others, based on what they deserve and need
Tulgan explains that the key to engaging and retaining the best talent today is to take it, one person, at a time, one day at a time—situational leadership based on who, why, what, where, and how an individual should be managed in order to do their best work. He points out that when managers maintain high-quality one-on-ones with their direct reports, they almost always increase employee performance and morale, increase retention of high performers and turnover among low performers, and achieve significant measurable improvements in business outcomes.
This is the same advice that Gallup is providing to organizations. It reinforces the work that I have been doing with nurse leader coaching. The challenge in nursing is that with so many FTE to supervise – just telling nurse managers to do it is not enough. They need help with skill development, they need tools that provide reminders and prompts, and they need encouragement to delegate some of the coaching follow-up to Assistant Nurse Managers and Charge Nurses. As we move into this decade, this coaching and leadership support will not be an optional activity. It will be part of how the workforce evaluates its leaders.
Read Rose Sherman’s new book – The Nurse Leader Coach: Become the Boss No One Wants to Leave
© emergingrnleader.com 2020
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