“Teach them to have a servant’s heart.” Susan Gatto, PhD, RN, CNE, and Undergraduate Nursing Program Director at the University of Central Arkansas, reflected on this statement from a Nursing Recruiter as she drove home from a frustrating, albeit, productive meeting. Dr. Gatto heeded the challenge and began to think about the difficult task of instilling affect into her students to make them more marketable for entry into nursing as well as durable for a long-term nursing career. She stumbled upon the concept of “servant leadership” which was becoming increasingly popular in the world of business and non-profits but had yet to be given significant consideration in the nursing industry.
Servant Leadership was first coined in a 1970 essay, called Servant Leader, by Robert K. Greenleaf. He described servant leaders as focused on a holistic approach to decision-making which considers the effect on all constituents. Indeed, through collaboration and a sense of community, a servant leader includes relevant parties to solve problems and achieve results. Not to be confused with servitude, the servant leader takes a team approach to the delivery of nursing practice relying on interdisciplinary teamwork, shared decision making, and ethical behavior. The concept of servant leader has ebbed and flowed in popularity over the years, but the roots of empowering employees connects with leaders who seek enduring, impactful, and far reaching success throughout an organization.
Effective servant leaders are attuned to the following ten characteristics/skills:
- Listening with the purpose of understanding instead of being understood can be an effective tool. A tremendous amount of meaning can be gained through the hearer’s experience of listening.
- Empathy develops from an unqualified acceptance of another person’s perspective, thoughts, and feelings – even while performance may be judged more critically.
- Healing is defined as “to make whole” which is something all strive for but may never really complete. Acknowledgment of healing can be a key connector for a leader and those she serves.
- Awareness allows one to step outside of oneself and, ultimately, leads to value building and value clarifying.
- Persuasion is a powerful tool that can lead to progressive, forward movement at the individual, group, and institutional level.
- Conceptualization identifies leaders as visionaries with the ability to see beyond the moment envisioning the culmination of a plan or initiative.
- Foresight allows for the ability to anticipate the consequences of action or inaction which allows an effective leader to guide constituents through next steps.
- Stewardship includes the concept of looking at the broader picture of how an organization fits into society and if there’s an opportunity to advance the greater good.
- Growth is an important characteristic of a servant leader. The servant leader is committed to developing talent and opportunities and believes that each person can offer valuable contributions.
- Community offers each contributor a sense of inclusion and a chance to build a better, more effective organization.
Even champions of servant leadership have difficulty incorporating the concept of servant leader into organizations and, particularly, nursing school curriculum. Nursing educators know very well the push vs. pull scenario that evolves from recruiters expecting students to be job-ready with the limited experience and increased restrictions that are placed on student nurses in clinical settings. With this in mind, how exactly would a nurse educator implement this sort of training into an already packed curriculum and, further, how does one empower faculty to embrace the concept?
Many faculty members naturally incorporate the concept of servant leadership into the curriculum through their own focus on service. However, it may be necessary to bring to servant leadership to the forefront of an organization with a concerted initiative to identify and promote the visibility of service opportunities for both faculty and students. The support of the Student Nursing Association is a great way to identify service as a priority component of a nursing program. Highlighting faculty members’ service to community encourages students to model this behavior.
An even more powerful way of communicating the value of service to the nursing student is to actually incorporate it into the curriculum. Dr. Gatto recognizes that “students don’t always understand why they are being taught something, but the affective domain is just as important as the cognitive and psychomotor domains.” Practically, sometimes it is easier to plan a classroom activity than a service project, but the demonstrative learning from a service project may be more impactful, particularly, for today’s student.
The goal of building affect through service and encouraging the understanding of servant leadership is, arguably, a significant opportunity to connect today’s student with more foundational philosophies of nursing. Many students identify different motivations for pursuing a career in nursing. In the past, anecdotally, when students were asked why they wanted to be a nurse, they identified thoughts of helping others or adding meaning to their own lives. Current students often lead with motivations that include a means to a certain lifestyle, job security, and the like. Working under the theory of what you get out of an experience is directly related to what you put in, it may be necessary to balance changing motivations with insight into the critical components of service that are an inherent and valuable part of the nursing tradition.
Kaplan Nursing would love to get your thoughts on servant leadership, service within the nursing profession and how to include the concepts in curriculum. Please use the form here to provide your feedback on servant leadership.
Contributor
Dr. Susan L. Gatto, PhD, RN, CNE is an Assistant Professor and Undergraduate Nursing Program Director at the University of Central Arkansas.
Greenleaf, R.K. & Spears, L.C. (2002). Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness 25th Anniversary Edition. Paulist Press.
NCLEX-RN® and NCLEX-PN® are registered trademarks of the National Council of State Boards of Nursing, Inc.
