Perceptions of leadership style between nurse managers and their staff in Eastern Saudi Arabia: A cross sectional survey

Abstract

Background: Understanding nurses’ perceptions about their nurse managers is a crucial element to consider as it helps in the performance of the nurse managers and retention of nurses and reflects the nature of a competent workforce in achieving the organisational goals.
Objective: To explore if there is a difference in perceptions of leadership style between nurse managers and their staff and discuss why this occurs.
Methods: A cross-sectional descriptive comparative research design was used.
Results: Nurse managers rated themselves as using transformational and transactional factors more than the nurses perceived them utilising these various leadership styles. Nurse managers, however, rated themselves lower than nurses in both laissez-faire and management-by-exception-passive.
Discussion: The leadership style preferred by the followers is consistently rated higher than the leadership style that their leaders are utilising. Formation of accurate self-perception is a delicate process, especially for people in management positions. Bias in higher self-ratings may occur for several reasons, including gender, which forms the basis of this discussion.
Conclusions: The results highlight the need for nurse managers to reflect on their practices and find new ways to enhance their leadership styles.

Keywords

Nurse managers / Perceptions / Leadership styles / Saudi Arabia / Gender

INSTITUTIONAL REVIEW BOARD STATEMENT

Ethics approval was obtained from King Abdullah Medical City (Institutional Review Board RS-MoH 018-35). In addition, received a facilitation letter from Ministry of Health (Research and Studies Affairs Unit). Plus, ethics approval was obtained from Human Research Ethics Committee of University of Technology, Sydney Ref. No. 2013000623.

INFORMED CONSENT STATEMENT

Informed consent was obtained from all participants involved in the study.

FUNDING

The work for this article was funded by a scholarship from the Ministry of Education, Saudi Arabia to complete her doctoral research.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This paper is part of the lead authors doctoral research completed at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) University, Australia. Our special thanks are extended to the nursing managers and nurses who participated in this study. The authors extend their appreciation to Ministry of Education Saudi Arabia for funding this study. All identified authors have contributed equally to the preparation of this article.

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST DISCLOSURE

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest, financial or otherwise with the preparation of this article.

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