Leadership Approaches and Characteristics: A Literature Review Assignment

Assignment Task

Leadership interviews and discussion paper 

How can leadership approaches, and a leader’s characteristics, influence practice change?

In the literature, you will find a great deal of information about approaches to leadership (or theories of leadership) and the characteristics of good leaders. Some of the ideas in the literature have been developed in other disciplines (e.g. business) and adapted for nursing and midwifery. Other ideas have been developed for the profession by researchers observing and talking to nurses and midwives.

The readings from chapters in Stanley (2011) are a good example of both. Stanley (2011) draws on general leadership literature and uses the results of his research from his salient doctoral thesis with nursing and midwifery leaders. Besides the literature, it is possible for you to learn about leadership by exploring what occurs in practice, both from your own critical reflections in practice and by examples of leadership practice provided, in this instance, by the two clinical leaders you will interview for the assignment.

The purpose of this assignment is to allow you to demonstrate a thorough understanding of clinical leadership with an emphasis on leadership and change in practice. 

In order to help you balance your position (opinion) in the assessment, we ask you to search for scholarly literature much more widely than the readings provided in this unit and to critique the literature you find with reference to contemporary practice as described by two clinical leaders that you will interview. Thereby making a judgment about the applicability, for nursing and midwifery practice, of the ideas presented in the literature. You should ask whether the leadership behaviours described by interviewees match the literature and what are the consequences of their leadership behaviours in relation to practice change.

For this assignment, you will interview two nurses or midwives from any location or specialty with experience in leadership. Please do not identify them in your written work: you may call them nurse 1 and 2 or A and B. Integrate your findings from your interviews and scholarly literature, peer reviewed literature from the Utas library, to construct a 3000 paper (plus two sets of interview questions in a separate appendix) that addresses the following question:

How can leadership approaches, and a leader’s characteristics, influence practice change?

The purpose of the interview with clinical leaders is to find out how they lead.  Do not ask them what they know theoretically about leadership (that information is in the literature),  rather ask them what they do and how they approach different challenges to keep up with the constant evidence-based changes in healthcare. Their actions will reveal what they know about leadership, practice change, what approach they take, and what the result is when using their approach. 

If you ask the interviewee to describe examples of how they have led change in practice you will find it is easier to link leadership approaches to actual practice change.

Example: An interviewee (Nurse A) told me about a time when she returned from holiday and the team had already introduced a change to work allocation with the intention of improving continuity of care. They had been preparing for the change for over a month and the interviewee had planned that they would wait for her to return from holiday before introducing the change. At first, she was surprised and a little upset the team had not waited for her return as planned. On critical reflection she realised that patients had benefited from the early change, the team had been adequately prepared, and the only harm was to her pride. She met with the staff, asked for a briefing on progress and congratulated them on their initiative. She discussed with them communication channels and ways that they could have conveyed their frustration and desire to go ahead with the change before she left.

Links to consider and search literature via the UTAS library databases about :include transformational leadership, communicator role, critically reflective, patient centered care, emotional intelligence.

Some of the examples will enable you to substantiate the literature and some may lead you to question and critique the literature. For example, I might comment on the above example that transformational leaders may have to accept that they are not always in control!

Below are interview question that you are encouraged to use. These questions will enable the interviewees to describe their leadership approach. This is not a test for the interviewees, so give them the interview questions in advance so they can think of examples. Set up the interview with a comfortable private room, and enough time to perform the interviews without rushing. This may also be done virtually if needed. 
The assessment task provides you with an opportunity to identify in their responses (narrative/ story telling), examples of their approaches to leadership and/or characteristics of leadership as identified in the literature. The aim is not to criticise their approach but to use the literature and the findings from the interview to answer the question:

Interview questions

• Please tell me what things you did when you first took up your leadership role? This may break the ice and start the flow of conversation.
• Please tell me all about a  practice change initiative  you have led? Hopefully this question will go well, thus you will be able to ask them to provide you with more details/ examples.
• Please tell me about a time when the team or members of the team  were resistant to change  and  how you managed the situation ?
• Please tell me how you have supported the professional development of the team to  facilitate practice change ?

Encourage the interviewee with prompts to the questions above to enable you to gain a greater insight into their behaviours.

Addition questions

Only you know your chosen leaders, so you are in the best position to think of a few additional questions that will assist you to gain any further information about you leaders leadership and practice change. For example, has there been a practice change initiative in your department that you could specifically ask them about? 

The additional questions are your choose  HOWEVER just be sure that the question/s you ask will assist in answering the question posed.  Any extra information that does not specifically answer the question posed, will not gain extra marks.

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