Nursing Leadership Blog

Coming into the last two weeks of the semester, motivation seems like a great topic to cover at this time! It makes so much sense that the success of a team or workplace is directly related to the level of motivation that team or employees have. The key part of motivating is finding out what people wants and figuring out how you can best provide that or assist them in earning it. There are so many different facets of ways that managers can motivate employees. It mostly all boils down to learning to understand them individually and learning what makes them tick! What you know that you can “attack” them from all sides finding different ways to motivate that individual employee and every employee.  I thought it was great the way Sean orchestrated that everyone is motivated in different ways and that it is a leader’s role to continually find ways to motivate those around them. Recognition seems to be one of the best ways to motivate and encourage. Even when handing out recognition, i

Strategic planning is all about how we are going to go from where we currently are to where we want to be (our goals). I like how Sean pointed out that making goals is the easy part, the action necessary between making goals and reaching goals is what is hard. I once heard someone say of goals, “goals without actions are simply wishes”. In the past strategic planning was done without exact data or research. Modern day strategic planning is more data based. Data is more easily accessible and being in the information sharing era, research is so much easier and simpler than it used to be. Strategic planning should focus on 6 months to 2 year periods. The days of projecting out 5 years and strategically planning for it are in the past. We currently set long term goals, but strategically plan for the short term to take the steps to eventually reach our goals. Sean discussed a particular CEO who made his personal values also the values of his organization. Sean discussed how this often

For this interview I interviewed Lori. Lori is the office manager as well as the billing/tax lady for a local small business. I really haven’t given too much consideration to budgeting before now. It is funny because my wife is the daughter of a CPA and her entire life she has been taught to budget, budget, budget! I was not, and I think it drives my wife crazy sometimes! Having the opportunity to interview Lori was a great learning experience. It has been my experience that people who work in business finance/accounting do not always have the most upbeat or friendly of personalities, Lori was not as expected. She was so entertaining to talk to and happy to share with me her insights into budgeting. This was the first thing I learned from her, budgeting isn’t always boring and the people who do it aren’t either! Within Lori’s business there is a lot of room is left for employee/numerical error. The opportunity for big mistakes is budgeted into their budget! This almost always gu

I am right along with Sean when it comes to change. I love it! It excites me and is something I am always seeking out. I do believe a solid foundational way of doing things is needed and good, but there are always ways to do things better! No matter what it is, there is always a way to do it better. It seems that with every task I do I am always running scenarios through my mind of how I can change it. I know this isn't the case with everybody. Some people enjoy clear cut direction and longevity so that they may perfect their skills and job. I completely understand this as well, but like Sean says, change is one of the only constants in the universe. Change must and will happen to adapt to our surroundings and way of life. Without change, we would all eventually fail. Often times introducing change is difficult in the workplace. Many people have done things one way their entire career and then they are asked to adapt to a new way. This can obviously be difficult for many. For cha

I had not considered the complexities of scheduling before this unit. As units get larger the difficulty of scheduling increases as well. It is vital to have staff aware of their scheduled work times and present for them, these RN's are depended upon to support and maintain people’s lives. If scheduling is not done well or if RN's are not properly informed or do not understand their schedules people may suffer physically because of it. Charge nurses and managers carry a heavy load in creating schedules and ensuring staff is aware of their responsibilities. I now more fully understand the stresses on these managers who have to juggle people’s personal schedules, being short on staff, and whatever other problems present themselves. At first glance it seems that scheduling should be a quick and simple process, but in reality it is a difficult and very important job of the charge nurse/managers. I will be sure to be mindful of this burden when receiving future schedules on my unit