On self-leadership

It is wonderful to be able to do something positive about yourself. Lead yourself.

Self-leadership is one of my favorite topics. When personal influence is enacted in one’s own life and work environment, things happen. Personal changes involve training and building capacity, sharing skills and knowledge, and empowering oneself to contribute to the well-being of others and a leader of change.

After identifying upcoming nurse leaders in Africa, the Academic Leadership Development Academy (ALDA), an initiative of Africa’s Tau Lambda-at-Large Chapter, sponsored them to attend a leadership development program in Pretoria, South Africa. This nurse leader initiative was created to “educate and empower nurse leaders to think and act with a broader mindset, bringing the nursing perspective to influence the work of multinational health endeavors.”

As one of the presenters of the program, I was in the fortunate position to observe nurses developing personally and professionally. At our last gathering in April 2012, we talked about self-leadership. The purpose of this session was to learn to think more critically about one’s leadership style and practices—about modeling, mentoring and coaching within professional constraints and pressures. Participants were expected to show evidence of their own self- leadership practices, using various strategies for addressing interdisciplinary and multicultural team building and management.

After reflecting on their experiences while attending the program over the course of two years, the participants shared best practices they had learned about leading themselves and others. Observing that nurses are uniquely positioned to influence others about health issues that affect people everywhere, they shared their commitment to improving the health of people in their countries and leading in their work environments. I encourage nurses who have experienced personal change after participating in such staff development or training opportunities to influence nursing practice and thus advance sustained change.

I wish to acknowledge the fellows who attended my last session on self-leadership at ALDA in April 2012. Representing the University of Malawi; University of Fort Hare, Free State Province; University of Swaziland; and Tshwane University of Technology, they are shown in the photograph below.

Participants in Academic Leadership Development Academy

We dedicated this session to a dear colleague—part of this group—who passed away during our journey to becoming leaders.

For Reflections on Nursing Leadership (RNL), published by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International.