Although the reviewers are far from impressed with the
designs of the 24 studies deemed worthy of inclusion in the
review, their overall conclusions suggest that there is evidence
that leadership in nurses can be developed through educational
activities, modelling and practicing leadership. In terms of
behaviours and practices, they conclude that relationship skills
are more important than financialand technicalabilities,and that
demonstrated leadership tends to foster leadership behaviours
in others. Particular traits and characteristics that have been
shown to promote leadership are openness, extroversion and
motivation to manage. Furthermore, age and experience
facilitates leadership, while gender seems unimportant. Leader
effectiveness was seen to decrease in healthcare settings in
which leaders had less contact with care-givers. Opportunities
to practice, observe and model leadership skills led to greater
self-efficacy in nurses’ leadership behaviours. Finally, leadership
training programmes were mostly found to be effective, not just
in bringing about short-term change, but also in the long term.
In the context of this article, the findings suggest that the
‘gap’ between education and the leadership demands of the
clinical setting, as identified by Heller et al (2004), could
perhaps be bridged by employing successful training methods
as used in the studies reported by Cummings et al (2008).The
emphasis on relationship skills as the most important leadership
skill would suggest that leadership development programmes
should include this element. In this light, it is not surprising
that student nurses valued relationship qualities,such as effective
communication and being approachable, highly in the people
ultimately responsible for helping them bridge the gap between
their training and practice (Zilembo and Monterosso, 2008).
While temperamental factors mentioned by Cummings et
al (2008), such as extroversion and openness, may not be
readily affected by education, there are undoubtedly other
communication and relationship building skills that can be
developed in training and placement. For instance, emotional
intelligence, the ability to integrate and manage emotions and
reason, could be developed through training. A recent review
exploring the relationship between ‘emotional intelligence’
and nursing leadership cautiously suggests a central role for this
ability (Akerjordet and Severinsson, 2010).