In these transitional times, when the old health care order is falling away and a new one is emerging, transformational nurse leaders are needed to guide our staff, patients, families, and institutions into this new era of health care. Leadership of this kind comes from "the inside out" and in order to truly be an agent of change, we must be willing to risk transforming ourselves.
This can be very challenging. Fear of relinquishing the traditional command-and-control style of leadership in favor of a less familiar yet more authentic style of leading can keep us locked into old habits. So how can we learn new ways of leading? For a quest like this, I often turn to nature as a guide.
NURSE JACKIE
Last fall I participated in a women's leadership retreat to explore myself as a leader. I began with a basic question: Whom I am leading and where am I leading them?
As part of the retreat, I took these questions out with me on an early morning walk along the rim of a high desert mesa in northeastern Arizona. It was quiet except for some birds singing their dawn songs in the trees below. Leaning against a boulder, I surrendered my mind to the stillness around me and felt at peace. Then a deerfly started buzzing in my face. I swatted it with my baseball cap, annoyed. My serenity dissipated into the air around me.
Distracted, my thoughts left the mesa and shifted to my work. I pictured myself in the chaos of a nursing unit. The sound of conversations behind curtains, the clanging of metal against metal, the smell of cleaning solution, all the unanswered emails and unending demands from nurses, doctors, and administrators wafted through on the warm desert breeze.
Later, in the growing heat of the day, I asked for another message from nature. At that moment, I became aware of a falcon flying gracefully on the air currents overhead. I knew from where I sat that what appeared effortless did in fact take a particular kind of wisdom and elegance to work with the force of the winds and not against them.
Reflecting on both of these encounters with nature and using nature's wisdom as a metaphor for my own emerging leadership, I asked myself, "how often do I spend my energy swatting at small nuisances when I would be better off reading and navigating the larger currents?"
My quick annoyance at the irritating buzz in my outer world had mirrored to me how easily I allow my mind to become diverted by the buzz of all sorts of minor occurrences beyond my control. The fluidity of the falcon using the wind currents to soar effortlessly reflected the innate grace that is available to me when I take the time to balance mind with body, heart, and spirit.
I realized that my guiding question wasn't "who am I leading", but rather, "how do I want to be as a leader?" What an important shift!
I find great wisdom and insight is available to me when I step into nature in an intentional way. Over the course of this one retreat, many more profound insights came to me regarding who I am as a woman and as a nurse leader with a passionate desire to make a profound difference in the field of health care.
Spending several days on a retreat in nature is an effective, powerful, and delightful way to renew and grow oneself as a transformative nurse leader. However, great learning and insight can also come from a simple encounter with nature in our own backyards or local parks, if the intention is there.
Next time you're heading out into nature and you know you'll have some quiet time on your own, consider where you're feeling challenged in your life or in your work. Then set a question as your guiding intention and pay attention to the signs nature offers to you.
I was so inspired by my experience on that retreat last fall that I'm now co-leading that same program because this is the kind of transformative experience I want to bring to nurse leaders. I know it is a deeply rejuvenating experience, one that can revitalize our overworked selves while helping us to reconnect with the vision that brought us into nursing in the first place.
Transformational Nurse Leadership - Cultivating Leaders Through Personal Encounters With Nature NURSE JACKIE
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