NURS 626 Week 2 Leadership Development Project Part 1: Reflection, My Leadership Style Example

Reflection on My Leadership Style: How a Night Charge Nurse Learned to Lead by Serving, Explaining and Staying Honest

Introduction

For nine years I have worked nights on a 32-bed cardiac step-down unit, the last five as a charge nurse, and next spring I expect to apply for the unit's assistant nurse manager position. Last winter, after a night when two patients deteriorated within an hour of each other, a new graduate thanked me at 7 a.m. for "staying calm and telling us why." That comment made me ask a question I had never put to myself directly: what kind of leader am I, and where did that come from? This paper reflects on the influences that have shaped my leadership style, including the managers I worked under, a project that failed, a mentor, leadership theory and research, an academy I attended, and Scripture. It closes by naming my style and the weaknesses I expect the Leadership Practices Inventory to show.

Professional Experiences: A Manager Who Came at Night

The first leader who shaped me was the manager who hired me, whom I will call Diane. She did something no manager I had known before did: once a month she came in at 2 a.m., without announcement, and worked alongside the night shift for two hours. She hung fluids, answered call lights and asked us what made our nights harder. Within a year the unit had a second night patient care technician and a new process for overnight pharmacy questions, both traced to things she heard on those visits. Kouzes and Posner (2017) describe the first practice of exemplary leaders as modeling the way, which they explain as clarifying one's values and then setting the example through daily actions. Diane never spoke to us about her values; she showed them by sharing the worst hours of our work. I now do a smaller version of the same thing as charge nurse, taking a patient assignment on the heaviest nights instead of staying at the desk, and I intend to keep the 2 a.m. visits if I become a manager.

A Failed Project and the Cost of Skipping People

My second influence was a failure. Four years ago I led a project to move our unit's bedside report to a structured tool. I built a good tool, tested it with two friends, presented it at a staff meeting and launched it the following week. Within a month, half the nurses had quietly returned to the old format. When I asked why, several said they had never been asked what was wrong with the old report, and two senior nurses said the tool did not fit patients on continuous infusions, which was true. I had treated the change as a design problem when it was a people problem. Roussel et al. (2020) describe change as something leaders accomplish with and through others, and they stress involving staff early. I learned that lesson the expensive way. The second version of the tool, built with eight nurses from both shifts, is still in use. I lead differently now because I once watched a good idea fail for no reason except that I had not asked anyone.

A Mentoring Relationship: Learning to Explain

My third influence has been a mentor, the hospital's director of cardiovascular services, who agreed three years ago to meet with me every other month. Her most lasting lesson was simple: people will accept almost any decision if they understand the reason and believe you would tell them if it were wrong. When I complained that staff resisted a new heparin protocol, she asked whether I had explained why it changed. I had not. I had forwarded the email. Since then I explain decisions, even small ones, during the 7 p.m. huddle, and I tell staff what I do not know. That habit is what the new graduate noticed on the night two patients declined. It also reflects the practice Kouzes and Posner (2017) call enabling others to act, which they tie to building trust and sharing information so others can make good decisions.

Leadership Theory and Scholarly Reading

Reading leadership theory in this program gave names to what I had seen. Greenleaf (1977) proposed that the true leader is servant first, whose leadership grows from a desire to serve and is proved when the people led become wiser, freer and more able to serve in turn. Diane's night visits and my mentor's habit of explaining both fit that description. Saavedra et al. (2025) brought together 14 nursing studies of servant leadership, which between them surveyed just over seven thousand people, most of them women. Across those studies, servant leadership went along with more positive attitudes and behavior among nurses, stronger relationships between leaders and nurses, and greater psychological safety, and the authors also examined how these links differed by gender. That evidence encouraged me, because the style I admire seems to help nurses, not only to feel good to leaders.

Transformational leadership, as Burns (1978) first described it, raises followers to higher levels of motivation and purpose by connecting their work to shared values. Afriana et al. (2026) reviewed 13 quantitative studies from non-Western health systems and found strong correlations between transformational leadership and nurses' job satisfaction and work engagement, with the style explaining up to 71% of the variance in turnover intention in one study, though most studies carried some risk of bias. I recognize transformational elements in myself when I connect a difficult night to why our patients need us, but I also recognize that I am better at serving than at inspiring a vision.

Authentic leadership has been the third influence from reading. Mastro et al. (2025) reviewed quantitative studies of authentic leadership in US acute care hospitals published through 2025. The studies were mostly small cross-sectional surveys measuring nurse outcomes, and several found that authentic leadership predicted lower burnout and greater compassion satisfaction with small to moderate effects. The evidence is modest, but authenticity names something my mentor taught me: leaders who are consistent and open about what they think and do not know earn trust that a polished manner cannot.

Academic and Continuing Education Experiences

Two experiences outside my unit have shaped me. The first is this MSN program. The courses in nursing administration showed me how much of a manager's work happens away from the bedside, in budgets, staffing plans and committees, and they made me realize that serving staff at 2 a.m. is not enough if I cannot also secure the positions and equipment they need. The second is the hospital's twelve-month emerging leaders academy, which I completed two years ago. The academy included 360-degree feedback from my manager, peers and staff nurses. The feedback was humbling. My staff rated me highly on support and fairness but lower on giving direct feedback, and one comment said I "avoid telling people when they've done something wrong until it becomes a big deal." I recognized the truth of it, and it is the first weakness I discuss below.

Faith and Scripture

My faith is the deepest influence on my leadership, and it explains why the servant model attracts me. When the disciples argued about greatness, Jesus told them that whoever would be great among them must be their servant, pointing to His own example of giving His life for others rather than claiming service from them (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Mark 10:43-45). I do not think that verse makes every leadership decision easy, but it settles the question of what leadership is for. Nehemiah has also shaped me, because he combined prayer with planning: he surveyed the broken walls at night before he asked anyone to build (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Nehemiah 2:12-18). His example reminds me that serving people well includes doing the homework before asking them to follow. Finally, Paul's instruction to speak the truth in love (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Ephesians 4:15) speaks directly to my weakness, since I have often chosen love without truth by avoiding hard conversations.

My Leadership Style

Putting these influences together, I would describe my leadership style as servant leadership with a transformational edge and an authentic core. I lead first by meeting the needs of the people on my shift, sharing their work and explaining my decisions. I try to connect hard nights to the purpose of our work, though I am still learning to articulate a vision beyond the next twelve hours. And I try to be the same person in every setting, open about the limits of my knowledge. In Kouzes and Posner's (2017) terms, I expect my strongest practices to be modeling the way and enabling others to act.

Blind Spots and Areas for Growth

Honest reflection requires naming what this style can miss. My first blind spot is the one the academy feedback revealed: a servant leader can avoid conflict in the name of kindness, and I delay corrective feedback until a small problem becomes a large one. My second is vision. Because my instinct is to meet immediate needs, I rarely step back to describe where the unit should be in three years, and Kouzes and Posner (2017) treat inspiring a shared vision as a practice of its own. My third is recognition. I thank people in passing, but I seldom celebrate accomplishments in ways that the whole team sees. I expect the Leadership Practices Inventory to show lower scores in inspiring a shared vision or encouraging the heart, and I will use those results to build the Performance Development Plan later in this course.

Conclusion

My leadership style did not come from a single theory. It grew from a manager who worked nights beside her staff, a project that failed because I skipped people, a mentor who taught me to explain, research that gave names to what I had seen, an academy that told me uncomfortable truths and a faith that defines leadership as service. The result is a servant leader who explains and tries to stay honest, but who still avoids hard conversations and seldom lifts her eyes to the long view. The rest of this project will test that self-portrait against the inventory and turn its weakest point into a plan.

References

Afriana, R., Komariah, M., Mediawati, A. S., & Aziz, M. A. (2026). The role of transformational leadership in improving nurse retention and well-being in non-Western countries: A systematic review. Journal of Healthcare Leadership, 18, Article 556120. https://doi.org/10.2147/JHL.S556120

Burns, J. M. (1978). Leadership. Harper & Row.

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

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

Kouzes, J. M., & Posner, B. Z. (2017). The leadership challenge: How to make extraordinary things happen in organizations (6th ed.). Wiley.

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

Roussel, L. A., Thomas, P. L., & Harris, J. L. (2020). Management and leadership for nurse administrators (8th ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning.

Saavedra, S., Ruiz-Palomino, P., Pérez-Contreras, R., & Gonzalez-Sanz, J. D. (2025). Impact of servant leadership on the work environment and the attitudes and behavior of nursing professionals as a function of gender: A systematic review. Journal of Nursing Management, 2025, Article 8825138. https://doi.org/10.1155/jonm/8825138