At the base
To promote healthy work environments, several professional organizations, including the American Organization of Nurse Executives (AONE), the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN), and the Association of perioperative Registered Nurses, defined competencies essential to successful nursing leadership and have developed assessment tools that measure these skills and behaviors.
The vision of the AONE is to shape the future of healthcare through innovative and expert nursing leadership; this requires nurses in leadership positions to develop and maintain core nurse leader competencies. The AONE asserts that nurse leader competencies are relevant to all nurses in supervisory positions regardless of their education level or organizational title; leadership competencies are applicable to both current and aspiring nurse leaders in planning and preparation of career advancement. The IOM recommends that nursing education programs should prepare the nursing workforce across all levels to assume leadership positions.
One way to prepare leaders is through the nursing leadership competencies of communication and relationship building. According to the AONE, communication and relationship competencies include effective communication, relationship management, influence of behaviors, ability to work with diversity, shared decision making, community involvement, medical staff relationships, and academic relationships.
Competency in communication and relationship management examines how leaders understand the people they work with and how they use that knowledge to effectively build relationships.
Leaders build quality working relationships that are characterized by trust, expectations, and support. Effective and competent leaders are empathetic, compassionate, and consider the impact of decisions on their direct reports. Competent leaders inspire and influence people to work toward a shared goal, gain voluntary commitment rather than compliance, and increase the recruitment and retention of quality employees.