Does a structured coaching model added to an evidence-informed training intervention improve managers’ transformational leadership behaviors?

Nurse leaders are often placed into management positions often because they excelled as a clinical nurse. Those who get promoted to management positions attend meetings, participate and lead in shared governance meetings and may seek other leadership opportunities. However, high percentage of nurses in management positions do not receive proper leadership training. This has been shown to influence manager effectiveness and turnover, which can result in reduced healthcare quality, safety and patient satisfaction. Transformational leadership training is known to inspire positive changes in manager effectiveness and hence care quality and safety. Furthermore, individualized coaching helps solidify the training in each of the 4 areas of transformational leadership. The purpose of this evidence-into-practice project was to develop, implement, and evaluate an education and individual coaching intervention for managers focusing on core transformational leadership concepts. Five managers in a large urban medical center were selected to receive the intervention, consisting of 4 education hours and 3 individual coaching hours with an additional 1 hour of group coaching over the course of 6 weeks. The 4 core elements of transformational leadership and the 1 core element of transactional leadership were measured at baseline and again 2 weeks after the final coaching session. Findings showed no statistical significance in change of behaviors. Education in transformational leadership in addition to the coaching did improve the scores of the majority of participants. The major benefit of combining leadership education with individual coaching is to help solidify the transformational leadership principles and bring real life examples to each of the 4 transformational leadership principles. Lessons learned included that schedules needed to be fluid and each leader is different in their approaches and places in their leadership journey, so coaching had to be individualized for each participant