LEADERSHIP ACADEMY

'Your enthusiasm and commitment will rub off on others'

19 August, 2011 | By Dickon Weir-Hughes

Energetic leaders with positive attitudes motivate their staff, says Dickon Weir-Hughes

One important concept that leaders should try to promote within their workplace is excitement.

Without excitement the workplace can be dull, and staff will not be motivated to give their best. A good leader keeps the workplace alive with excitement, making it somewhere staff look forward to coming to.

As a leader, you should be enthusiastic about work and delivering your best. This enthusiasm and commitment will rub off on others.

To be excited, you need to possess a certain amount of energy, although not too much as overenthusiastic individuals can come across as inauthentic. A moderate amount of energy and positive attitude will encourage others to feel the same way and will result in a happier workplace.

Excitement is vital to change management. Healthcare is constantly evolving, and, as such, new schools of thought about the best ways of working are being implemented. This will involve change, which will unnerve some of the team.

If you approach change with a positive “can do” attitude, this will inspire others to adopt a similar stance. A feeling of excitement rather than dread about change will help you lead it.

There are ways you can foster excitement - having a complementary mix of staff who are extroverted and introverted. The former add excitement and a motivational atmosphere, while the latter may be daunted by this.

You have to get to know your workforce so that you can determine what makes them tick and get them to be excited about their day-to-day work.

Individuals have to be excited about their work. It’s unrealistic to think as a leader you can ensure this, but you can achieve this more if you allow individuals to change their normal working patterns or to lead on different areas.

This will make them excited and also help you to see your team gain confidence.

You can also think of new ways to deliver a mundane project.

Think about doing different things to inject more excitement into the workplace, such as a staff lunch or a team away day. These types of morale-boosting occasions help bring a team together and add excitement.

Lead by example - always make sure that you are excited about your role and the impact your efforts will have on the organisation and patient care.

You should be motivated and be able to express this. An excited team will be productive and effective in delivering the goals and vision you set.

This is an excerpt from Clinical Leadership from A to Z by Dickon Weir-Hughes. Available from Amazon.co.uk

Bringing excitement to the workplace

Try and operate with sufficient energy and emotional expression to enthuse those around you
Remember the importance of balance. A leader who is too excited may have a tendency to cause stress in a team, but one who is too restrained can struggle to motivate. Think about how you can get the day-to-day balance right
Think about the changes you can make in your team’s roles and responsibilities to surprise and delight

Dickon Weir-Hughes is chief executive and registrar of the Nursing and Midwifery Council. Before his appointment in 2009, Professor Weir-Hughes held
senior roles at Barking, Havering and Redbridge, The Royal and Westminster hospitals

Readers' comments (36)

Debra Smallbone | 19-Aug-2011 6:28 am
I couldn't agree more with this article.Thank you for this.
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mike | 19-Aug-2011 9:35 pm
"Energetic leaders with positive attitudes motivate their staff", is this why the NMC and RCN are such shockingly poor organisations?
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Monica Dennis | 20-Aug-2011 9:45 am
Interesting stuff - has Professor Dickon Weir got the results of a staff survey at the NMC to back up his claims. We would expect that the level of staff excitement at the NMC must be sky high if this claim is correct.
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Anonymous | 20-Aug-2011 9:46 am
A good leader does not pontificate about leadership. They just do it!
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judith allen | 20-Aug-2011 1:07 pm
Does he live in the real world. Great idea "staff away days"..does this apply to clinical staff at ward level? Does he realize how difficult if not impossible it is to get time off for any sort of CPD? Also not sure what he is including in "mundane tasks"..hope its not "basic care" like for instance helping someone to the toilet or giving them a drinK...but then thats probably not exciting enough!!
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Mags | 21-Aug-2011 11:59 am
If this article wasn't so patronising, out of touch and, (given the dreadful staffing levels, attack on pay and conditions, low morale, etc.) inappropriate, it would be funny. I ain't laughing.

Rank stupidity!!!!

Create a positive work atmosphere by speaking out for Nurses. i.e. campaigning for government to pay us what we are due, protect our pensions, ensure that we have adequate staff/patient ratios and resources to actually do that work, etc. See how excited we get then!

In the meantime, take your stupid staff lunches and away-days and..................!
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tinkerbell | 21-Aug-2011 3:46 pm
Mags well said. We're all swinging from the chandeliers at our place. Staff lunch, what's that? We hit the ground running when we arrive until we leave and are lucky to get a 20 mins break, never mind enough time to sit down and eat a meal. Most of us choking on the food whilst stuffing it down our throats to get back to the ward on time. Maybe if we had enough time to sit down and get a lunch we might have the 'energy' to get 'excited'. I am sure we are all passionate about what we try to do and excited would be nice too but where's the money for a staff lunch going to come from or an away day when we've been told we can have a unit meeting at the moment (how exciting) but not an away day as we will have to' work our way up to an away day', whatever that means. Do we have to do something particularly spectacular to work our way up to an away day?
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Mags | 21-Aug-2011 4:09 pm
Too right Tink. Anyway, if we all went on an "away day", there's a good chance we wouldn't come back!
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mike | 21-Aug-2011 4:11 pm
Don't worry Mags and Tink, no one with any common sense pays much attention to what this patronising buffoon says. It is obvious he simply doesn't have a clue from his running of the pathetic debacle that is the NMC.
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tinkerbell | 21-Aug-2011 5:43 pm
This comment has been removed
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B R | 21-Aug-2011 11:57 pm
To charge enthusiasm it has to be multiprofessional. Unfortunately, they all have different 'leaders'. Having said that I see that if we all worked together the workload can be reduced by looking how interventions/tasks can be multifunctional.

On the other side of the coin, being more efficient may mean reducing staffing levels, whereby my vision is that it improves staff morale and patient care.

Whilst this 'conflict' exists we are in a no win-win situation.

It has been 16 years that my concept on true multi/inter-professional working has been battling with management and staff on the ground floor. I admit I failed because no-one embraced my enthusiasm and 'excitement' and most of the staff felt threatened (of their identity).

Now the price is being paid. You don't need away days, but what happened to time-out days (ward level)? We bleat on about 'not having the time' therefore we lose opportunities. I sometimes ask myself why we let these things go, maipulation? .. and we go with it. Who should we blame?...ourselves, who let ourselves being manipulated, or management, who we see as our scapegoat.

We seriously have to take a stand on what we want for ourselves and for our patients. Please someone see how we are being directed!
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B R | 22-Aug-2011 0:01 am
Typos!!... penultimate paragraph, fifth line, 3rd letter is missing 'n'
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tinkerbell | 22-Aug-2011 9:36 am
B R | 21-Aug-2011 11:57 pm

Don't allow other peoples 'issues' dampen your enthusiam, just be yourself regardless.
You were born an original don't die a copy.
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tinkerbell | 22-Aug-2011 10:17 am
tinkerbell | 21-Aug-2011 5:43 pm

back on the naughty step then? Had to happen. NMC soon to be a knocking at my door?
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Anonymous | 22-Aug-2011 10:55 am
Professor Hughes - if you are still the kind of senior nurse that took off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves and helped my colleague prepare someone very sick for theatre (a long time ago, granted) then I would go along with the sentiments behind this article.

I suspect though this is not the case anymore from where you are comfortably sat.

Shame - you WERE the kind of senior nurse visible and supportive that we would all like to have on our side now.
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Anonymous | 22-Aug-2011 3:10 pm
I agree that a positive leader and role model, inspires the staff around them. Constant negativity can only reap negativity. As a profession, instead of constantly trying to find someone to blame for the position we find ourselves in, is it not time that we started to look at ourselves? I am often concerned that the attitudes expressed and illustrated within the readers comment section, actually comes from qualified nursing professionals. If I was a member of the public reading these comments and not a nurse, they would not instill confidence in the nursing profession for me. If we channelled the emotions that are so agressivly expressed into productive change, then maybe we could go some way to righting the wrongs that we feel so passionately about..
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mike | 22-Aug-2011 5:09 pm
Anonymous | 22-Aug-2011 3:10 pm

You are right and wrong here, opinions expressed here are often filled with passion and emotion, it is a simple way to debate issues and let off some steam. Whilst I agree that productive and even aggressive change is needed to right the wrongs that we feel so passionately about, (just read the post on striking in the comments section by Mark Radcliffe, I cannot believe there is such bloody apathy in this profession!) many of these comments are simply indicititive of that frustrated passion when we have nowhere else to express it or utilise it.

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tinkerbell | 22-Aug-2011 6:29 pm
Unreservedly apologise to Dickon.
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tinkerbell | 22-Aug-2011 6:39 pm
Totally agree with Mike that we all are totally frustrated and sometimes letting off steam communicates our passion, or vice versa, otherwise we might explode, which is not a good coping strategy. Maybe it can get a bit aggressive, but that is all down to perception. Some might not say 'boo to a goose' and any heated debate may sound aggressive, including name calling, which can also be letting off steam and not really meant on any personal level as none of us know each other (I guess) personally. Some may see nothing aggressive in a full on heated debate. I guess it's where you feel comfortable when dealing with conflict, how easily offended one is, your temperament and experiences of conflict in your own life so, it is all very relative.
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Mags | 22-Aug-2011 11:17 pm
tinkerbell | 21-Aug-2011 5:43 pm

Hilarious tink! I can't believe that you had a comment removed. And I missed it!!
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