Cultural Diversity in Leadership
The nurturing and developing of leaders dates back to the beginning of mankind. Throughout our history, theories and research-based studies have significantly helped build a body of knowledge to enable the acquisition of sound, productive, and effective leadership skills. But, is that enough? Leadership in nursing needs more sensitivity to ethnic diversity and culturally enriched characteristics of the patient and nursing staff representative of today and tomorrow's ever changing healthcare systems. Leadership in nursing administration is many things to many people, depending on what task they are performing at a given moment, but is probably best described as the positive handling of professional interaction, as between nursing and the medical staff, the administration, the patient, other healthcare disciplines, nursing staff, politicians, external surveyors of standards, educators, and whomever you can think of impacting the enterprise being led.
Leadership is a learned activity based on knowledge, skill, vision, experience, attitudes, responsibility, accountability, and autonomy. It requires creativity and innovation, courage of one's convictions, and concern for all people, whether they are patients and families, professional colleagues, or our personal friends and families. The nurse leader is passionate about nursing and the mission we engage in-the work of caring. The successful nurse leader must have a high level of aspiration and determination toward goals that the healthcare system and nurses are seeking and demonstrate actual success in attaining these goals.
Linda Burnes Bolton, DrPH, RN, FAAN, vice president and chief nursing officer, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, Calif, and member of the editorial board for Nursing Administration Quarterly, is such a leader. We are certainly privileged to have her serve as issue editor for this most timely topic featuring Diversity in Leadership. She has passionate enthusiasm for nursing and considers the word passionate as the best word to describe her. Her unique perspective provides an aspect of leadership that clearly blends ethnicity, cultural immersion, and strong education, which enables her to use her leadership abilities in many and diverse ways. She most recently was elected president of the American Academy of Nursing, where she continues to share power in shaping the future agendas for healthcare and nursing.
And that is what leadership in diversity is all about. Every nurse leader must be knowledgeable about societal forces and constraints, especially in this most significant presidential election year. The political processes have an effect on all we do: the work of the organization, the community we live in, and our entire nation. We are at a most crucial time in history to either move forward with stronger, more accessible, and achievable healthcare for all, or slide down the slippery slopes of politics into less nursing and fewer nurses to provide care. Whether we like it or not, we have the opportunity to serve as the nerve center of the future of healthcare. This global era of technological age enables nurse leaders to use their wide-angle lenses as a safeguard of both patient and staff rights.
Never before or since, did I experience the most diversity, culturally and ethnically, when serving as the associate executive director at the King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, from 1987 to 1991. Not only was adaptation to a very different culture essential, but having nurses from over 40 different countries required constant listening and learning and modifying my own behavior. I had to earn acceptance through professional credibility with emphasis on the right results, which improved patient care and nursing practice in a very culturally different environment. This adventure in turmoil became a journey of curiosity and discontent. What greater incentive could there be to innovate and provide leadership for long-term adaptability and constant change to diverse background nurses and the Arabic administrative team?
Teaching healthcare administration at the graduate level at King Saud University to women in nursing and men in administration was a unique experience because men and women could not be in classes together, even though the content was similar. To add value to any enterprise, the adage of "Know thyself" is probably the most essential ingredient in culturally diverse leadership. Interpersonal influence in the environment is possible when there is sensitivity to unique cultural and ethnic values. Enabling the home country culture to grow and learn so that nurses can provide leadership with the same cultural, religious, and ethnic values empowers new leadership in healthcare for that country.
The wise nurse leader gathers facts carefully, listens and learns, and does not impose past ideologies on others. Every nurse is a leader and the leadership role is found at all healthcare enterprises where nursing is practiced. The nurse leader, who synthesizes past knowledge, integrates the present, and is an active, articulate member of interactive networking throughout healthcare, is able to lead the journey through tumultuous times in the future.
Our greatest challenge is to tear down the walls and barricades of old ways in nursing practice and education as we implode our energies of opposition about who should be a nurse. Nursing as a profession may be self-destructive or could use the strength of purpose, vision, wisdom, academic process, and deep respect and love for all people as the bridge for the future. Interpersonal influence in the environment with sensitivity to unique cultural and ethnic values will enable all nurse leaders to tear down the walls of the past that limit nursing's capacity to collaborate. We can spiral upwards globally toward renewed visions of better healthcare for all by embracing all nursing leaders wherever our journey takes us.