Measuring Transformational Leadership in Establishing Nursing Care Excellence.

Transformational leadership (TL) is known to be essential to achieving Magnet recognition, an internationally prestigious status for nursing care excellence. Since its inception in the 1980s, empirical studies have identified benefits of implementing the Magnet Model involving improved patient care and nursing workforce outcomes. However, little is known about the leadership styles of nurse managers (NMs) working in a regional Australian context, which may hinder achieving Magnet status. To close the knowledge gap, a self-administered survey was conducted to measure leadership styles of NMs at a large health organization comprising hospitals with a wide range of service profiles in regional Australia using a validated tool-the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ-6S). One-way of variance (ANOVA) was used to identify statistical significance between respondents' demographic characteristics (e.g., age, education, gender) and their MLQ-6S scores. Respondents ( = 78) reported their leadership styles as more transformational, compared to transactional or passive/avoidant leadership styles. The findings indicated that NMs' higher education ( = 0.02) and older age ( = 0.03) were associated with TL styles, whereas passive/avoidant leadership was generally reported by female ( = 0.04) and younger ( = 0.06) respondents. This study has identified differences in reported leadership styles among NMs, providing a unique organizational insight into developing strategies to improve NMs' TL, which could help to facilitate the implementation of the Magnet framework. Healthcare organizations in similar settings could benefit from replicating this study to identify a dominant leadership style and customize strategies to improve TL.