Leadership in Nursing: the Influence of Personality Traits

According to (Allport, 1961), personality is a dynamic organization inside the person, of a psychophysical system that creates the person’s characteristic pattern of thoughts, feeling, and behaviors. Specific personality thus refers to the unique individual behavior traits and emotional patterns that evolve from biological and environmental factors from which the individual occupies and tends to trigger certain reactions.

Effective leadership involves bringing together diverse people and helping to find a common purpose for every individual in anticipation of achieving similar goals.

Therefore, my specific personality that can enhance or hinder effective leadership in the healthcare environment includes:

1. Being introvert
2. Being intuitive
3. Feeling
4. Judging

An introvert is often addressed as an individual who is quiet, reserved, and thoughtful. These individuals do not seek attention outside or from social gatherings. Additionally, introversion can be viewed as a personality trait predominately characterized by circling on internal feelings than on external sources of stimulation.

As s nurse, being introverted means being quiet and reserved. This is unlike the prevailing healthcare environment that is characterized by various individuals from diverse backgrounds.

The nursing profession is in itself all about relationships and communication with patients. However, introverts still fit comfortably into the nursing profession and provide the desired care.

Being introverted enhances leadership in the health care environment since nurses who are introverts are better listeners and more observant, allowing the patients ample time to think and talk, making good team players, and allowing the patient to be at ease. This is all in anticipation of making a healthy environment for the patients and subsequently enhancing leadership within the healthcare environment.

On the contrary, nurses who are introverts can subsequently hinder effective leadership in the health care environment as this is a surrounding composed of great human emotions, constant variations, and many people of varying backgrounds. Hence this implies that introverts avoid such an environment. However, they can overcome this with practice, familiarity, and team-building events.

Being intuitive

An intuitive person is one who senses things about people and their surroundings and experiences that are not evident to normal individuals. According to (Rovithis, 2018), intuition is simply a linear generation of knowledge in which experiences are harnessed solely in mind and resurfaces when the need arises in the form of intuitive knowledge.

Intuition is widely used in the healthcare environment, especially in decision-making processes. In his work (Turan, 2016), Turan describes intuition as deciding to do something without having a logical explanation. Over the decades, nurses have incorporated the idea of founding their care decisions on their intuitive personality into nursing disciplines.

For instance, a nurse intuitive is very useful in the health care environment as they can comfortably sense the unspoken agony of a patient. Nurses use their intuitive nature to pay attention to the patient’s condition even without telling them the actual condition.

Additionally, intuitive nature always ascertains the nurse’s readiness, especially in cases where the patient’s condition worsens abruptly. This type of trait has the advantage of improving effective leadership within the healthcare environment as patients are attended to promptly and critical conditions are detected in advance.

Feeling

Foremost, people can make decisions based on two sets of criteria, namely, thinking and feeling. In our case, feeling is depicted as the main personality trait. Hence, feeling in a situation is expressed when an individual makes decisions rooted in their value system or else based on what each individual believes is right.

As a nurse, feeling as a personality trait has a great influence on decision-making, which eventually affects the entire healthcare environment. The nurse can make informed decisions on the patient’s condition and believes in the relevant move on the patient. This fosters effective leadership within the healthcare environment.

Judging

Judging as a personality case refers to our attitude toward the outside environment. It also dictates how we live our lives on a day-to-day basis. Notably, individuals with judging preferences require their things to be done neatly, orderly, and well-established.

Nurses possessing a judging personality can make informed lists to establish, take ample time to schedule events in advance as well as form and express judgments. This is an expression of sufficient and effective leadership skills that will go hand in hand with improving the healthcare environment for the patients. This has the advantage of ensuring the patient is attended to in scheduled terms and every operation happens as planned.

Conclusion

In conclusion, individual personality has a great effect on effective leadership. As nurses, our behaviors and emotional pattern in the face of an event depicts how our personality can enhance or hinder effective leadership in the healthcare environment, as this involves diverse patients with varying health complication and with a need for attention. Specific personality traits play a crucial key in our healthcare environment.

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