NURS 524 Week 7 Reflective Exercise 3 on Servant Leadership Example

Reflective Exercise 3: Testing My Leadership Against Servant Leadership, From Doing Things for Staff to Growing Them

Where I Started

When I first read the phrase servant leadership, I assumed I already practiced it. As a charge nurse, I am the first to start an IV when someone is behind, the one who stays late to finish a colleague's charting, and the one who takes the hardest admission. O'Brien (2011) describes servant leadership in nursing as grounded in a calling to serve, expressed through characteristics such as listening, empathy, healing, stewardship and commitment to the growth of people. Reading those chapters this week, I realized that most of what I called service was doing things for people. Very little of it was helping them grow. This reflection tests three of my habits against the concept.

Habit One: Taking Over Tasks

When a nurse falls behind, I step in and do the work. Last week, a nurse in the second year of practice was struggling to manage a patient on a heparin infusion with frequent lab draws and dose changes, and I took over the titration because it was faster. The patient was safe, and the nurse thanked me. But O'Brien (2011) places commitment to the growth of others near the center of servant leadership, and by that standard I served the task, not the nurse. That nurse did not learn to manage the protocol, and the next time the problem would come back to that nurse again, or to me. A servant leader might have stood alongside and talked through the next titration rather than taking the syringe. Doing a colleague's work can feel like service while quietly keeping that colleague dependent.

Habit Two: Deciding Alone Under Pressure

On difficult shifts, I make staffing and assignment decisions quickly and alone, and I rarely explain them. My reasoning is that the team is too busy to be consulted. Porter-O'Grady and Malloch (2016) describe effective leaders as those whose character invites trust, in part through openness about how decisions are made. When I decide alone and silently, I may be efficient, but I teach the team that they have no voice. A small change, such as explaining at the huddle why I assigned the two fresh post-operative patients to the most experienced nurse, would cost one minute and would show staff that decisions are made for reasons they can understand and question. It would also let staff correct me when I have missed something, such as a nurse who already has two patients with heavy wound care. I have noticed that the nurses who disagree with my assignments rarely say so at the time; they comply and then talk about it later, which is exactly the silence a servant leader should be trying to end.

Habit Three: Avoiding Hard Conversations

Servant leadership is sometimes misunderstood as being agreeable. O'Brien (2011) makes clear that service includes healing and stewardship, which sometimes require difficult honesty. I have avoided telling a colleague that a rushed bedside manner is upsetting patients, because I did not want to damage our friendship. In avoiding the conversation, I protected myself, not the colleague or the patients. A servant leader would have the conversation privately and kindly, with the goal of helping the colleague grow. That might mean starting with what the colleague does well, describing one specific moment a patient seemed upset, asking how the shift had felt from the colleague's side, and offering to help think through what could change. Framed that way, the conversation is an act of care for the colleague and the patients rather than a judgment, and it is the kind of healing O'Brien includes among the servant leader's tasks.

What Research Adds

Two recent studies add perspective to this self-assessment. Hall and O'Malley (2026) developed and tested an instrument to measure servant leadership behaviors among nurse leaders, aligned with the components of the Magnet model. Beginning with 53 attributes and expert review, and testing with 200 nurse leaders in three Magnet hospitals, they arrived at a 13-item scale with strong reliability. The existence of such a scale reminded me that servant leadership is not only a disposition but a set of observable behaviors that others can rate, and that my own view of myself may differ from my colleagues' view.

A Japanese study adds a caution. In a survey of 306 hospital ward nurses, the Japanese ward survey by Hontake et al. (2026) reached a sobering result for anyone who hopes style alone will do the work: what predicted whether nurses felt safe to speak, and therefore how engaged they were, was the climate of the ward, and servant leadership added nothing significant once climate was in the analysis. That result does not mean servant leadership is unimportant, since a leader helps shape climate over time, but it suggests that a leader's personal style will not engage staff on its own if the unit does not feel safe. For me, that means the hard conversations and shared decisions I have been avoiding matter more than the extra tasks I take on, because they are what change the climate.

Faith and Service

Jesus washed the disciples' feet and told them, "I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you" (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, John 13:15). It is tempting to read that as an instruction to do humble tasks for others, and it is that. But the passage also shows Jesus teaching through service, preparing the disciples to serve others in turn. That is the part I have been missing. My service has been generous but not formative, and I want that to change.

Commitments and Questions for the Final Paper

I am making three commitments for the remaining weeks of the term. First, when a colleague falls behind with a skill they are still learning, I will coach rather than take over unless the patient is at risk. Second, I will explain my assignment decisions at each huddle in one or two sentences. Third, I will have the conversation I have been avoiding, within the next two weeks, with the goal of the colleague's growth. For the Christian Nurse Leader Paper, I will explore two questions this reflection raised: how servant leadership can be measured in practice, and how a servant leader shapes the climate of a unit rather than only individual relationships.

References

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

Hall, H., & O'Malley, P. (2026). Development and psychometric testing of an instrument to measure servant leadership behaviors in Magnet nurse leaders. Worldviews on Evidence-Based Nursing, 23(5), Article e70178. https://doi.org/10.1111/wvn.70178

Hontake, T., Nishi, M., Kuzushima, S., & Kamizawa, N. (2026). Effects of organizational climate and servant leadership on work engagement among Japanese nurses: The mediating role of psychological safety. Journal of Nursing Management, 2026(1), Article e5755950. https://doi.org/10.1155/jonm/5755950

O'Brien, M. E. (2011). Servant leadership in nursing: Spirituality and practice in contemporary health care. Jones and Bartlett Publishers.

Porter-O'Grady, T., & Malloch, K. (2016). Leadership in nursing practice (2nd ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning.