Mentorship for leadership generativity : a study of Australian nurse leaders

Mentoring relationships are identified as powerful and dynamic alliances that promote personal and professional development. Since the late 1970s, interest in mentorship in nursing has been growing internationally, with mentoring relationships acknowledged as a positive way for nurses to gain professional competence and success across a range of nursing contexts. Specifically mentorship in nursing has gained prominence as a supportive mechanism for growing nurse leaders and sustaining the future of the nursing profession. In Australia, mentorship in nursing, and more specifically mentorship for nursing leadership, is a relatively recent concept with associated definitional dilemmas and poor understanding of form and outcomes. Although formal mentorship structures are in place across many nursing settings for a variety of purposes, it is not well known to what extent Australian nurse leaders have experienced mentorship. It is not clearly understood whether there is a particular form and structure to mentorship for leadership in Australian nursing contexts or whether Australian nurse leaders identify mentorship as contributing to their own leader development. The aim of this study was to develop an interpretation of Australian nurse leaders‟ understandings and experiences of mentoring relationships for nurse leadership. Hermeneutic phenomenology provided the methodology for the study. In particular, key constructs of Heideggerian phenomenology and Gadamerian hermeneutics contributed to the study’s form and progress. These concepts include an acceptance of human beings as constructing meaning by being in the world, at the same time creating their world from understandings and experiences, and, identifying language as the instrument by which human beings develop and share meaning. Mentoring relationships were explored with nurse leader participants who shared their subjective experiences of mentoring through conversational narrative. From these conversations, integrated experiential structures that were central to mentorship for nurse leadership were developed. The themes highlighted „connection‟ as an essential component of mentoring relationships. These themes were titled: Esteemed connection, Noticing the connection, Evolution of the connection, and Progressive connection. The themes were further examined to find deeper meanings and to construct an authentic explanation of this phenomenon of being in the world. The lived experience of mentorship for nurse leadership was understood and described through the motifs of imagination, journey and mode-of-being. The study uncovers Australian nurse leaders‟ experiences of mentorship for leadership. It reveals how nurse leaders‟ perceive and articulate mentorship for leadership, and shows how mentoring relationships are established and maintained. The study illuminates the connection between mentorship and leadership and reveals these to be integrated ways of being in the world. Mentorship for nurse leadership is recognised as growing out of the past and present and being orientated toward the future, in particular, its generative impact is recognised. The meanings that evolved out of the interpretation of mentorship for nurse leadership are embedded in the philosophical framework of the study and reveal the phenomenon as a way of being in the world. Meanings are discussed in terms of individual nurses, the contexts of nursing work, and the broader perspective of the Australian nursing profession