Emotional Intelligence In Nursing Leadership

One of the greatest challenges in the nursing profession is developing nurse leaders. The ability to be successful in a leadership position has many variables and certain behavioral characteristics are needed. Emotional Intelligence (EI) is an important concept to consider for a strong leader, this is the balance of thinking and feeling. People that are effective as a leader are those that have an optimistic attitude, flexibility in thought, the ability to cope with imperfections and uncertainty and are emotionally balanced (Mittal, Sindhu,2012). This paper will define other leadership styles, how strong leaders demonstrate EI and the importance of it in nursing. The concept of emotional intelligence was originally introduced by Peter Salovey and Jack Mayer in 1990 and has gained more popularity over the years. Salovey and Mayer have suggested that …show more content…
With nursing shortages and the issue of retention calls for a closer look at the influence of the nurse managers and staff job satisfaction. This paper analyzes the model of ‘Emotional Intelligence of Managers and Leader’; this identifies four skills for EI leaders. The first skill is accuracy of emotion, how well one can express their emotion and how accurately they can read others emotions. The second skill is how well one acts in emotional events and if they are able to still prioritize thinking when emotions are high. The third skill is the ability to correctly connect and recognize emotions to events. The fourth skill is the conscious regulation of emotion, the ability to stay open while still engaging and detaching from emotion (Feather, 2008). The ability to take these skills and apply them to a nurse leadership position can give a better understanding of the needs of employees and allows for more support of the