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‘It's the relationship you develop with them’: emotional intelligence in nurse leadership. A qualitative study

28 November 2019
Professional
02 November 2019
Volume 28 · Issue 21

Abstract

Aim:

to investigate emotional intelligence (EI) and its relationship to nursing leadership.

Background:

strong, effective leadership is core to organisational competency and significantly influences care quality. EI is the ability to understand one's own feelings and to assess and respond to the feelings of others. It is linked to self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and social skills, all of which are vital in leadership roles. However, insufficient research explores EI in nursing leadership from the perspective of nurse leaders.

Design:

a qualitative study employed interpretive phenomenological analysis methods, using a purposive sample of band 7 sisters/charge nurses/team managers (n=5) from one Welsh health board. Semistructured interviews were recorded and analysed in four stages.

Findings:

four clusters of themes were identified, each with two to three subthemes. These were: sensing others—the empathetic leader; experiencing the affected sense of self; strategies employed to build the team; and reading the flux of the organisation.

Conclusion:

although the nurse leaders were unfamiliar with the concept of EI, their narratives reflected some core values of EI. However, significant barriers around time, pressure and staffing levels impeded their potential to use EI to become more effective leaders. Nurse leaders should harness the power of emotions to influence others to achieve excellent care.

Effective healthcare organisations must have strong leadership at every level from the board to the ward (The King's Fund, 2012). However, the Francis report (Department of Health (DH), 2013) identified a breakdown in leadership behaviours as one of the reasons for the service failures that arose in Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust. Furthermore, it was noted that the hospital's leaders had passed behaviours to their staff that were more concerned with hitting targets than caring for patients.

Nurse leaders play a core role in providing high-quality patient care and services (The King's Fund, 2012). Emotional intelligence (EI) is said to be central to effective leadership in the NHS and a foundation of outstanding care quality (Carragher and Gormley, 2017). Understanding the intricacies of characteristics that enhance leadership should therefore be a goal of any healthcare organisation.

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Emotional intelligence
Nurse leadership
Relationships
Organisational behaviour
Interpretive phenomenological analysis