Abstract
This paper makes an important contribution to understanding the role that authentic leaders play in creating supportive professional practice environments linking nurses’ perceptions of patient care, quality and job satisfaction. It is vitally important that we learn from the experience of high-performing health care organisations in other countries that have achieved significant results by focusing on constancy of purpose and organisational and leadership stability, as well as allowing sufficient time to work on the many other factors that contribute to delivering high-quality care, including developing effective leadership and a culture that puts patients’ needs first. It could be argued that many experienced leaders call on different leadership styles and approaches depending on the context and situation, not something tackled in this paper. Authentic leadership is often poorly defined and incorporates concepts of authenticity, engagement, personhood, emancipation and transformation among many others. Goleman (2000) suggests that in order to get results, the leader’s repertoire requires several leadership styles, with the ability to move seamlessly from one style to another, depending on the situation and context. The situational leader possesses the knowledge and skills to nurture the professional development of the follower while helping the follower develop their knowledge of self and of the context in which they carry out their practice. Person-centred facilitation is vital for effective practice development and is a holistic means of enabling practitioner emancipation, development of self and effective workplace cultures (Van Lieshout and Cardiff, 2015). Person-centredness is a core value enacted in effective workplace cultures and focuses on enabling personhood, or the ‘coming into own’ and flourishing of self and others. From their intensive research conducted over 20 years, Kouzes and Posner suggest that a transformational leader at their best will ‘Model the way, inspire a shared vision, challenge the process, enable others to act and encourage the heart’ (Kouzes and Posner, 2003: 4). So it is vitally important in these challenging and turbulent times that we find opportunities to encourage the hearts and minds of student nurses (and other health and social care professional students) before they reach the workplace so that they become the person-centred, authentic leaders of the future, engaging in critical discourse that encourages reflection on the assumptions, beliefs and presuppositions they hold and which constrain their view and perception of the world. The power of transformative learning (Mezirow, 1997: 7), to bring out the best in others, must be tailored to the needs of the follower and the level at which they are operating (Blanchard, 2007: 88). Having effective role models in the workplace is therefore essential to creating structurally empowering workplaces.