Transformational and Transactional Leadership Theories in Nursing Practice: Benefits and Drawbacks
Overview
This paper examines two major leadership theories in nursing: Burns' transformational leadership and Welch's transactional leadership. It analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of each approach, comparing how both theories aim to achieve optimal patient care quality through different managerial strategies.
What this essay covers
- Introduction to nursing and leadership theories
- Burns' transformational leadership theory: emphasis on inspiration and team empowerment with discussion of strengths and weaknesses
- Welch's transactional leadership theory: focus on clear standards, rewards, and penalties with analysis of advantages and disadvantages
- Comparison of both theories and their shared goal of ensuring quality patient care
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Nursing Leadership Theories
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Nursing Leadership Theories
Nursing entails giving individual and collaborative care to individuals, families, and groups of diverse natures or cultures. It includes giving attention to patients, creating plans for preventing illness, and providing care for the sick, crippled, and dying. The discussion centers on two major leadership theories, reviewing their benefits and drawbacks concerning nursing practice.
Burns' transformational leadership theory emphasizes how the leader's perspective inspires a team to achieve goals. The leader aims to transform the team's perspective to adopt the vision. Therefore, every action the nurse leader takes is to motivate subordinates to adopt the organizational vision and assist in realizing the goals (Kleber, 2022). The approach is crucial in nursing because it helps the team pursue a common goal, assists in attaining the care objectives, and enhances quality care across the institution. The strength of transformational leadership lies in its emphasis on empowering subordinates to ensure they can fulfill their roles. On the other hand, the transformational approach's weakness is that it takes time to achieve the goals. This is because the leader must place themselves as an equal team and allow them time to capture the organizational and team goals.
Welch's transactional leadership theory emphasizes establishing clear standards and assigning incentives or penalties following success or failure. In a transactional context, the nurse leader pushes the team to attain the care objectives by imposing rewards and punishments. So, the leaders offer guidance and impacts of following or failing to follow.