Healthcare Employees/Individual Contributors/Members/Adults
Nursing Administration Quarterly 2002, 26(3); pp. 44-59.
Also presented at the American Nurses Association Convention, July 2002 (Philadelphia)
This article describes the conceptual model of shared leadership development and summarizes the findings from a research program that demonstrated that implementation of a shared leadership concepts program in an organized delivery system increased staff use of leadership behaviors, professional nursing practice autonomy, and improved patient outcomes.
Nurses completed the LPI - Individual Contributor and Nursing Activity Scale (Katzell, 1980), and had five colleagues complete the LPI-IC Observer forms. Both of these were completed six months after the Shared Leadership Concepts Program.
Nurses showed significant increases in all five self-reported leadership behaviors and nursing professional practice autonomy from pre- to 6-months post-program. Observers’ perceptions of nurses’ use of all the leadership behaviors also significantly increased in all five leadership practices from pre- to 6-month postprogram. Pre-program, observer’s views of the nurses’ use of leadership behaviors were significantly higher than the views of the nurses in all five leadership practices. Six-months post-program, nurses still scored their use of all five leadership practices as significantly lower than their observers.
In addition, the researchers noted that there were no significant differences in any of the five leadership behaviors among those who responded to the pre-program leadership surveys as compared to those who failed to complete the 6-month postprogram surveys, "thus demonstrating that no response bias existed" (p. 50). Moreover, these findings, say the researchers, "suggest that the combination of goal-setting, educational program, feedback, and mentoring processes may interact to change and sustain leadership behavior and autonomy in a clinical setting" (p. 53).