NURS 489 Week 8 Group Project Example

Voice and Touch at the Bedside: What De Pree's Leadership Jazz Teaches Nurse Leaders

Slide 1: Leadership Jazz at the Bedside

• Max De Pree's Leadership Jazz, revised edition
• Leadership as an art of relationships
• Applied to nursing leadership on one unit

Speaker notes: Our group chose to build this presentation around one idea from Max De Pree's Leadership Jazz: that a leader's voice and touch must be connected. De Pree (2008) led the furniture maker Herman Miller, but his book is about people, not furniture, and nearly every chapter translates to a nursing unit. We will move through his main chapters, then show how they apply to a charge nurse's shift.

Slide 2: Zoe and the Nurse

• A granddaughter born at one pound, seven ounces
• A nurse's instruction: talk to her while you touch her
• She must connect your voice to your touch

Speaker notes: De Pree (2008) opens the book in a neonatal unit. His granddaughter Zoe, whose name means life, was born very prematurely, and a nurse told him to visit every day, to stroke her with his fingertip and to keep telling her that he loved her, because she needed to learn to connect his voice with his touch. De Pree took that nurse's advice as the core of leadership. As nurses, we might notice that the book's main lesson came from one of us.

Slide 3: The Leader's Voice

• What a leader believes
• Said clearly and consistently
• Heard in decisions, not only speeches

Speaker notes: For De Pree (2008), voice is the expression of a leader's beliefs. A charge nurse's voice is heard when she explains why she made an assignment, when she says what she will not tolerate and when she speaks up for a patient. Staff learn a leader's beliefs from what she says repeatedly and especially from what she says under pressure.

Slide 4: The Leader's Touch

• Competence and resolve
• Following through on what was said
• Seen at 3 a.m., not only at meetings

Speaker notes: Touch is how a leader's beliefs show up in action. De Pree (2008) connects it to competence and resolve. On a night shift, touch is the charge nurse who says patient safety comes first and then actually helps turn the heavy patient, or who says new graduates matter and then checks on the one who is drowning.

Slide 5: When Voice and Touch Do Not Match

• Words without action breed cynicism
• Action without explanation breeds confusion
• Trust depends on the match

Speaker notes: Most of us have worked for someone whose voice and touch did not match: a manager who praises teamwork but is never on the floor, or a nurse who is skilled but never explains anything. Mastro et al. (2025) reviewed studies of authentic leadership in United States hospitals and found that it was associated with lower burnout and greater compassion satisfaction among nurses. Authentic leadership, which emphasizes consistency between values and behavior, is close to what De Pree describes.

Slide 6: Why Jazz?

• The leader picks the music and the players
• Each musician brings a gift
• No one can script the performance

Speaker notes: De Pree (2008) writes that jazz, like leadership, combines the unpredictability of the future with the gifts of individuals. A shift is like that. The charge nurse cannot predict the admissions, the codes or the family meeting at midnight, but she can know her players and let each one contribute at their best.

Slide 7: A Key Called Promise

• Leaders make and keep promises
• Broken promises damage trust
• Small promises count

Speaker notes: De Pree (2008) gives a chapter to promises. On a unit, promises are often small: I will get you help with that admission, I will talk to the manager about the schedule, I will be back to check your patient. Each kept promise builds trust, and each forgotten one tells staff that the leader's voice does not mean much.

Slide 8: The Watercarriers

• People whose quiet work keeps the unit running
• Unit secretaries, assistants, environmental services
• Leaders notice and honor them

Speaker notes: De Pree (2008) honors the people he calls watercarriers, those whose work is essential but rarely recognized. On our units, they are the secretary who knows every doctor's number, the nursing assistant who notices a confused patient trying to get up and the housekeeper who turns a room over in twenty minutes. A good charge nurse knows their names and thanks them.

Slide 9: Delegate!

• Delegation means trusting others' gifts
• The leader steps back from some decisions
• Accountability stays with the leader

Speaker notes: De Pree (2008) treats delegation as letting go of an issue so that someone else can bring their gifts to it. Finkelman (2016) reminds nurses that delegation follows rules about the right task and the right person, and that the registered nurse remains accountable. Together they suggest delegation is both trust and stewardship.

Slide 10: Polishing Gifts

• Every person has gifts to develop
• Leaders create chances to grow
• Mentoring is part of the job

Speaker notes: For De Pree (2008), one of a leader's most serious failures is to hold back a person's potential. In nursing, polishing gifts looks like letting a strong nurse precept, encouraging a quiet one to join the unit council or giving a new graduate a challenging patient with support nearby.

Slide 11: Giving the Gift of Change

• Change can be a gift, not only a burden
• Leaders explain why
• Staff help shape how

Speaker notes: De Pree (2008) frames change as something leaders can give to an organization. Finkelman (2016) adds that staff accept change more readily when they understand its purpose and help plan it. When our unit moved report to the bedside, the change took hold only after nurses who had resisted it helped write the process.

Slide 12: Ethics and Leadership

• Where ethics and leadership intersect
• The leader's choices shape the unit's culture
• Integrity under pressure

Speaker notes: De Pree (2008) asks where ethics and leadership meet. For nurses, that meeting happens in staffing decisions, in how errors are reported and in whether a leader protects a nurse who speaks up. A unit learns its real ethics from what its leaders do when the right choice is costly.

Slide 13: Followership

• Leaders are also followers
• Good followers think, question and contribute
• Leaders depend on followers

Speaker notes: De Pree (2008) gives followership its own chapter. A charge nurse follows the manager and the policies of the hospital, and the staff nurses she leads are themselves leaders at each bedside. Strong followers ask questions and bring ideas, and a wise leader welcomes them.

Slide 14: What the Research Shows on Style

• Leadership style relates to job satisfaction
• Transformational, authentic, resonant, servant: positive
• Passive and laissez-faire: negative

Speaker notes: Specchia et al. (2021) reviewed 12 studies and found that 88% showed a significant link between leadership style and nurses' job satisfaction. Transformational leadership showed the largest number of positive links, and authentic, resonant and servant styles came next. Passive-avoidant and laissez-faire styles were negatively associated with satisfaction in every case. A leader who is absent harms morale.

Slide 15: Authentic Leadership in U.S. Hospitals

• Lower burnout, higher compassion satisfaction
• Mostly small cross-sectional studies
• More research on patient outcomes needed

Speaker notes: Mastro et al. (2025) found that nearly all of the evidence on authentic leadership in U.S. acute care measured nurse outcomes, with small to moderate effects on burnout and compassion satisfaction, and that the studies were mostly small surveys with moderate risk of bias. The evidence supports De Pree's ideas, but it does not yet show effects on patients, and we should say so honestly.

Slide 16: Voice and Touch on a Night Shift

• Start of shift: say what matters tonight
• Middle: be present on the floor
• End: thank people by name

Speaker notes: Here is how our group would apply De Pree on one shift. At the huddle, the charge nurse says plainly what matters tonight, such as the two fall-risk patients. During the night, she is on the floor helping, not only at the desk. At the end, she thanks people for specific things. Voice, touch and promises kept, all in twelve hours.

Slide 17: A Servant's Example

• Jesus washed His disciples' feet
• Leadership as service
• Power used for others

Speaker notes: On the night before His death, Jesus knelt to wash the feet of the twelve and then said that He had given them an example to follow (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, John 13:14-15). That is voice and touch together: He taught service and then served. De Pree's book reflects his Christian faith, and his picture of a leader who serves followers fits this example closely.

Slide 18: De Pree's Attributes Checklist

• Integrity, vulnerability, presence
• Courage, curiosity, humor
• A tool for self-assessment

Speaker notes: De Pree (2008) closes with a checklist of leadership attributes. Our group used it as a self-assessment. Most of us rated ourselves high on presence and lower on vulnerability, which we took to mean admitting mistakes and asking for help. We suggest every new charge nurse use the list after her first month.

Slide 19: What Our Group Learned

• Leadership happens without a title
• Trust is built in small, kept promises
• Followers show what kind of leader we are

Speaker notes: Working on this project, each of us found an example of De Pree's ideas in our own units, from a nursing assistant who was our best watercarrier to a manager whose voice and touch finally matched. The nurse who taught De Pree to connect voice and touch was teaching all of us how to lead.

Slide 20: Closing

• Connect your voice to your touch
• Honor the watercarriers
• Lead by serving

Speaker notes: We close where De Pree began, with a nurse in a neonatal unit. Whatever our role, our staff, like Zoe, learn to trust us when what we say and what we do are connected. Thank you for listening; we welcome questions.

References

De Pree, M. (2008). Leadership jazz: The essential elements of a great leader (Rev. ed.). Doubleday.

English Standard Version Bible. (2016). Crossway. (Original work published 2001)

Finkelman, A. (2016). Leadership and management for nurses: Core competencies for quality care (3rd ed.). Pearson.

Mastro, K. A., Courtwright, S. E., & Weaver, S. H. (2025). Systematic review of authentic leadership effects on patient, nurse, and system outcomes. Nursing Research, 74(6), 476-483. https://doi.org/10.1097/NNR.0000000000000855

Specchia, M. L., Cozzolino, M. R., Carini, E., Di Pilla, A., Galletti, C., Ricciardi, W., & Damiani, G. (2021). Leadership styles and nurses' job satisfaction. Results of a systematic review. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(4), 1552. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18041552