Authentic leadership among nursing professionals: knowledge and profile
Cleide Carolina da Silva Demoro Mondini, Isabel Cristina Kowal Olm Cunha, Armando dos Santos Trettene, Cassiana Mendes Bertoncello Fontes, Maria Irene Bachega, Flávia Maria Ravagnani Neves Cintra
Abstract
OBJECTIVES: to identify the knowledge of nursing professionals about leadership models and evaluate the authentic leadership profile among them. METHODS: analytical study, conducted between August and December 2015, involving 84 nursing professionals working in a public and tertiary hospital. We used two instruments: Sociodemographic Questionnaire with questions about leadership and the Authentic Leadership Questionnaire. RESULTS: both nurses and nursing technicians were unaware of authentic leadership. Both pointed to communication, planning, and organization as competencies of the leader (n = 58, 95%). Regarding the authentic leadership profile, we observed that the score was "high" among nurses and "low" among technicians. Holding a leadership position and professionally upgrading has positively influenced the highest-profile of authentic leadership. CONCLUSIONS: nurses demonstrated to know behavioral leadership, while nursing technicians showed knowledge about situational leadership. Nurses had a high score of authentic leadership behaviors, while nursing technicians had a low score, but we found no significant difference between them. Holding a leadership position and professionally upgrading has positively influenced the highest profile of authentic leadership.