‘It's the relationship you develop with them’: emotional intelligence in nurse leadership. A qualitative study

Abstract

Aim: to investigate emotional intelligence (EI) and its relationship to nursing leadership. Background: strong, effective leadership is core to organisational competency and significantly influences care quality. EI is the ability to understand one's own feelings and to assess and respond to the feelings of others. It is linked to self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and social skills, all of which are vital in leadership roles. However, insufficient research explores EI in nursing leadership from the perspective of nurse leaders. Design: a qualitative study employed interpretive phenomenological analysis methods, using a purposive sample of band 7 sisters/charge nurses/team managers (n=5) from one Welsh health board. Semistructured interviews were recorded and analysed in four stages. Findings: four clusters of themes were identified, each with two to three subthemes. These were: sensing others—the empathetic leader; experiencing the affected sense of self; strategies employed to build the team; and reading the flux of the organisation. Conclusion: although the nurse leaders were unfamiliar with the concept of EI, their narratives reflected some core values of EI. However, significant barriers around time, pressure and staffing levels impeded their potential to use EI to become more effective leaders. Nurse leaders should harness the power of emotions to influence others to achieve excellent care.

Relationship between emotional intelligence and job well-being in Chinese clinical nurses: multiple mediating effects of empathy and communication satisfaction

“…In this study, emotional intelligence had a significant positive predictive effect on job well-being, which supports Manse's [34] research results that showed that people with high emotional intelligence can better perceive the emotions of others. Further, they are good at psychological adjustment and the management of personal emotions, and thus are able to avoid depression and hide emotions.…”

Relationship between emotional intelligence and job well‐being in Chinese Registered Nurses: Mediating effect of communication satisfaction

“…Supporting previous research (Mansel & Einion, 2019), the results of the correlation analysis showed that there was a positive correlation between emotional intelligence and job well‐being for Chinese Registered Nurses. People with a high level of emotional intelligence can better perceive the emotions of individuals.…”

Development and Testing of a Measure of Self-awareness Among Nurses

“…Self-awareness enhances observational skills (Shirey, 2015), sequentially increasing their ability to be more cognizant of the struggles of their staff and patients. It allows managers to recognize their positive and negative emotions and assess their impact on others (Mansel & Einion, 2019). Therefore, future research is warranted to examine the levels and use of and application of self-awareness from nurse managers and leaders.…”