Senior Nursing Leaders: Understanding their emotional intelligence, leadership practices, and how both may be associated with engagement of their direct reports

Leadership by its nature is a social interaction and is present in every interaction between people. Leader behaviors and actions are observed and judged by followers during every interaction. For senior nursing leaders in healthcare organizations, how they practice leadership influences how followers connect with the senior leader. Senior nursing leaders must practice leadership in a way that fully incorporates emotional intelligence domains. The integration of emotional intelligence with follower-centric leadership practices creates a powerful combination of outcomes that influence engagement.|This Dissertation in Practice research study was designed using a qualitative approach to understand how senior nursing leaders’ self-perceptions of their emotional intelligence (EI) and leadership practices may be associated with direct report leader engagement. The value of this research was to understand the meaning and essence of the phenomenon experienced by senior nursing leaders and the information was extracted by using semi-structured interview questions to create categories, codes, and conceptual themes. |This research revealed that the self-perceptions and meaning of senior nursing leaders helped to validate that a leadership development program focused on this type of affective, cognitive, and behavioral learning would help improve emotional intelligence, leadership practices, and engagement of direct report leaders. This research demonstrated the need for an integrated leadership development program for senior nursing leaders to develop their EI and leadership practices.|Keywords: Leadership, emotional intelligence, engagement, leader development

Grantor dc:publisher

Creighton University

Year dc:date.issued

2016

Author dc:creator

• Laser, Craig S.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Ehrlich, Donna M.

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright is retained by the Author. A non-exclusive distribution right is granted to Creighton University and to ProQuest following the publishing model selected above.

Language dc:language.iso

en_US

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10504/85213

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:cdr.creighton.edu:10504/85213