TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP A students perspective

1. TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIPA students perspective Cerisha Singh

2. Transformational leadership • Too often, managers think that people development occurs once a year in performance reviews. That's not even close. It should be a daily event, integrated into every aspect of your regular goings-on. Customer visits are a chance to evaluate your sales force. Plant tours are an opportunity to meet promising new line managers. A coffee break at a meeting is an opening to coach a team member about to give his first major presentation. Think of yourself as a gardener, with a watering can in one hand and a can of fertilizer in the other. Occasionally you have to pull some weeds, but most of the time, you just nurture and tend. Then watch everything bloom. Jack Welch

3. Impact on students • Transformational leadership practices are skills that build and sustain human relationships that empower others to accomplish extraordinary things on a regular basis (Kouzes & Posner, 2002a). • Transformational leadership embodies an interaction style that elevates others to higher levels of motivation and morality (Burns, 1978) .

4. How you lead matters • While there are key qualities that are important for leaders to have, how you lead matters, too. Today nurses look for leaders with a transformational leadership style. • Transformational leadership is defined as "leaders and followers helping each other to advance to a higher level of morale and motivation." This leadership style is a radical departure from the "command and control" style that formerly predominated the nursing world • Research suggests transformational leadership enhances nurse satisfaction, promotes a positive work environment, and reduces staff turnover. Are you a transformational leader? Only your followers can answer this question

5. Coaching and mentoring • Great leaders come from great team members. Coaching and mentoring are often words associated with the transformational leader. The ultimate goal is to create a clinical staff leader who will head off in a different direction, and carve out new ideas and pathways. The transformational leader sets the standard by their actions, and not their words. • By giving students a chance to practice critical thinking and problem solving skills it will encourage their transformational leadership skills and aid students in finding and expressing their passion in nursing.

6. Continued • Current nurse leaders must teach student nurses to think and behave as leaders during their training. • This in turn will result in values and attitudes being retained, normalised and carried out throughout a nurses professional career. • . Leadership training should be context specific for the nursing profession, and include practical strategies for students to adopt and assimilate into practice. • Observation of, and working under, positive leadership skills enhance the learning experience. There are significant changes in key leadership skills and behaviours in students exposed to positive leadership attributes in their learning environment (Hendricks et al, 2010).

7. Role Modelling • My experience in being mentored is far from over. As a relatively new nurse, I have much to learn on this journey that will lead me to discover new leadership skills for myself, and to find ways to pass them on to others as effectively as my mentors have passed their skills onto me. As my own nursing career takes flight, I will be forever grateful to each nursing leader who has helped to nurture me along my path and to those who are still guiding me. • In my journey in nursing, I was fortunate to have crossed paths with a few transformational leaders. Most of them being at Netcare Alberlito. • A true leader, visionary, who is creative, caring, authentic, and who believes in development and growth is amongst us today. A role model for us students of today so that we may become the transformational leaders of tomorrow. • And I would like to say a big THANK YOU to ............

8. Food for thought