Why Nurse Leaders Derail: Preventing and Rebounding From Leadership Failure.

To be successful, nurse leaders must be able to develop and articulate a vision for their areas of responsibility, build strong relationships with those they lead, and execute strategies and actions to achieve shared goals. Emotional intelligence and mastering self, interpersonal, and team relationships, while understanding organizational culture and systems, are critical components of successful leadership. Nurse leaders must be aware of their own strengths and weaknesses, be able to manage their emotions, exhibit social awareness of others' emotions, and successfully manage their relationships with others within their sphere of influence. Leaders who fail to manage themselves and their relationships with others fail to lead with clear direction and purpose, or fail to deliver results for their organizations, and risk derailing their careers. This article focuses on common behaviors and characteristics that cause leaders to derail as well as the risks for leadership failure (self-imposed, boss-imposed, situation-imposed), including common traps leaders can fall into in the first months of assuming a new leadership role. Risks for career derailment and opportunities for preventing or rebounding from leadership failure are reviewed.

Nurses in the C-suite: leadership beyond chief nurse.

The US health care system is reaching a critical point. Consistent cost increases coupled with a struggling economy has illuminated the burden of more than $650 billion annually in health care expenditures. The ability to afford health care is a growing concern for individuals, businesses, and state and federal governments. In addition to costs, variability in quality, and utilization belie any claims of a rational and consistent system of care. Transformational change will require leaders to shape our future health care institutions. Nursing has historically not been considered as a leadership source for change of this magnitude. However, due to the sheer size of nursing, core skills, and competencies, nurses could be a viable resource. Competencies needed for nurse, health care, and physician executives were compared using the HealthCare Leadership Alliance data, which created a body of knowledge that identifies competencies in 5 domains. Findings demonstrate that nurses, health care executives, and physicians possess more than 80% of the competencies reviewed. To successfully take on the role of leading institutional response to the dramatically changing health care environment, nurses must not only have the requisite leadership skills and experience, they must also have an expectation of themselves to lead at this level.