NUR 531 Module 2 Leadership Theories Paper Example

Three Ways to Lead Across Professions: Transformational, Servant and Authentic Leadership on an Oncology Unit

[Student Name]

Southern New Hampshire University

NUR 531: Interprofessional Leadership in Healthcare

Leadership Theories Paper

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The organization, setting and figures below are a composite written as a model document. No real employer, client, colleague or patient is described.

Three Ways to Lead Across Professions: Transformational, Servant and Authentic Leadership on an Oncology Unit

Leadership theories are easy to admire and hard to choose between, because each describes something a good leader clearly does. The choice matters more when most of the people a leader needs are outside the leader's authority, as they are for a nurse manager whose unit depends on pharmacy, medicine, therapy, social work and facilities. This paper compares transformational, servant and authentic leadership, reviews the nursing evidence on relational styles and applies the comparison to a 26-bed oncology unit at a community hospital. It argues that authentic leadership offers the most durable foundation for interprofessional work, because trust across professions depends on consistency and transparency, with transformational behaviors layered on when the unit has to change quickly.

Transformational Leadership

Transformational leaders raise followers' sights beyond their own interests toward a shared purpose. Bass and Riggio (2006) describe four ways they do it: by acting as a model people want to resemble, by communicating a vision that gives work meaning, by challenging people to question assumptions and solve problems in new ways, and by attending to each person's needs and growth. The theory is attractive in nursing because it explains how a leader can lift a tired unit through a hard change.

Its weakness across professions is that it leans on the leader's personal appeal. A charismatic nurse manager may energize the nursing staff and leave the oncology pharmacist unmoved, since the pharmacist's sense of purpose comes from a different professional tradition. Vision alone does not tell the leader what the other profession needs.

Servant Leadership

Greenleaf (1977) proposed that the best leaders are servants first, measuring their success by whether the people they serve grow healthier, wiser and more capable. In practice, servant leaders listen before directing, remove obstacles and share credit. The fit with nursing's caring ethic is obvious, and on an oncology unit a manager who clears barriers for staff is valued.

The theory is less clear about direction. A leader who serves every group equally may struggle when the needs of pharmacy and nursing conflict, as they do over infusion delivery times, and servant leadership offers little guidance on how to decide between them. It also depends on the other professions reading service as strength rather than as a lack of conviction.

Authentic Leadership

Authentic leadership grew out of an argument that the root of every positive leadership style is a leader who knows their own values and acts on them consistently (Avolio & Gardner, 2005). Walumbwa et al. (2008) developed a measure built on four parts: self-awareness, openness about one's own thinking and feelings in relationships, decisions guided by internal moral standards rather than outside pressure, and a willingness to weigh evidence that contradicts one's own view before deciding.

The theory's strength across professions is that it produces trust, which is what a leader without authority most needs. A pharmacist or engineer who has watched a nurse manager admit a mistake, explain a decision openly and change course when shown better data is more likely to cooperate next time. Its weakness is that it says less about how to drive a specific change; an authentic leader can still move slowly.

Comparison

Table 1 sets the three theories side by side.

Table 1

Three Leadership Theories Compared for Interprofessional Work

What the Evidence Shows

Nursing research tends to group these theories together as relational leadership, in contrast to styles focused on tasks. From an initial pool of about 51,000 titles, Cummings et al. (2018) ended with 129 studies and found relational styles repeatedly associated with nurses' job satisfaction, well-being and positive work environments, a pattern that approaches centered solely on task completion failed to match. A review focused on patients found relational and transformational leadership linked with higher patient satisfaction and with lower mortality, fewer medication errors, less use of restraints and fewer hospital-acquired infections (Wong et al., 2013).

Two cautions apply. Most of the studies were cross-sectional, so they show association rather than cause. And because the reviews group the theories together, they cannot tell a nurse leader which named theory works best. What they support is the common core: leaders who invest in relationships get better results than leaders who only direct tasks.

Applying the Theories on an Oncology Unit

On the oncology unit, the most important relationships run outside nursing. Chemotherapy safety depends on the pharmacist, discharge on social work and case management, mobility on therapy and the building itself on facilities. None of those colleagues can be motivated by a nursing vision alone or served into agreement when interests conflict. What they respond to is a leader they trust to share data honestly, to say when nursing is part of the problem and to keep commitments.

For that reason, authentic leadership is the better foundation. Its components describe behaviors that build trust across professional cultures. When the unit faces a sudden, high-stakes change, such as a patient safety event that demands new practices from several departments at once, transformational behaviors become necessary: a clear account of why the change matters, and personal attention to the staff who carry the extra load. Servant leadership contributes most within nursing, in how the manager supports the unit's own staff: protecting time for chemotherapy competency training, fixing the equipment problems nurses report and making sure the people who absorb extra work during a crisis are the first to hear thanks. The three theories, in other words, describe different relationships rather than rival answers to the same question.

Conclusion

Transformational, servant and authentic leadership each describe something real, and the nursing evidence supports their shared emphasis on relationships over tasks. For a nurse manager whose work depends on colleagues outside nursing, authentic leadership provides the trust that interprofessional cooperation requires, while transformational behaviors carry a team through rapid change. The next project turns this lens on the writer, evaluating how closely day-to-day practice matches the authentic leadership the paper recommends.

References

Avolio, B. J., & Gardner, W. L. (2005). Authentic leadership development: Getting to the root of positive forms of leadership. The Leadership Quarterly, 16(3), 315-338. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2005.03.001

Bass, B. M., & Riggio, R. E. (2006). Transformational leadership (2nd ed.). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Cummings, G. G., Tate, K., Lee, S., Wong, C. A., Paananen, T., Micaroni, S. P. M., & Chatterjee, G. E. (2018). Leadership styles and outcome patterns for the nursing workforce and work environment: A systematic review. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 85, 19-60. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2018.04.016

Greenleaf, R. K. (1977). Servant leadership: A journey into the nature of legitimate power and greatness. Paulist Press.

Walumbwa, F. O., Avolio, B. J., Gardner, W. L., Wernsing, T. S., & Peterson, S. J. (2008). Authentic leadership: Development and validation of a theory-based measure. Journal of Management, 34(1), 89-126. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206307308913

Wong, C. A., Cummings, G. G., & Ducharme, L. (2013). The relationship between nursing leadership and patient outcomes: A systematic review update. Journal of Nursing Management, 21(5), 709-724. https://doi.org/10.1111/jonm.12116