Does leadership style influence staff?

 

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According to the Old Testament, the author describes a faith concept in the Book of Psalms, seventy-eighth chapter, verse seven; however, today, people have the same struggles typical for most Westerners, and that is trusting in God. At the intersection of faith and life, there is a test of whether to believe that God will take care of us or trust that he will do whatever situation or circumstance we find ourselves in: provide. Does a leadership style influence staff such that they feel provided for?

According to Akoo et al. (2023), the energy required to care for others, such as patients in the hospital, describes the experiences nurses feel regarding emotional caring. Often, nurses put on an appearance when taking care of patients when, in fact, they don't think that way, which contributes to what scholars explain as emotional labor. For example, nurses display a calm approach outwardly or externally but may internally feel an overwhelming sense of distress inwardly. When there is an increase in emotional demand, for instance, when caring for the ill, nurses can experience adverse emotional exhaustion, leading to burnout.

According to Akoo et al. (2023), leadership style can protect against staff burnout. What roles do leaders play in mediating the effects on staff to help alleviate burnout, improve mental health, and reduce emotional labor and fatigue in the caring profession? How do those caring for others find the motivation to continue their work when overwhelmed? These questions are challenging to answer; however, this blog's author believes that faith and leadership style are essential factors to consider.

Reference:

Akoo, C., McMillan, K., Price, S., Ingraham, K., Ayoub, A., Rolle Sands, S., Shankland, M., & Bourgeault, I. (2023). "I feel broken": Chronicling Burnout, mental health, and the limits of individual resilience in nursing. Nursing Inquiry, 31(2). https://doi.org/10.1111/nin.12609

Is being a healthcare provider immunoprotective?

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Consider what George Fitchett, a professor at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center, a chaplain specializing in the academic study of spiritual assessment, expresses and articulates in his work Assessing Spiritual Needs: A Guide for Caregivers.

We must be wise in our care for ourselves and others and especially discerning in the face of any problems. When something seems to be wrong, we must take care to discover what it is and find a remedy for it. When there are opportunities for enriching others' lives, we must respect who they are and work in partnership with them. (Fitchett, 2002, p. 22-23)

With spiritual awareness at the forefront of the following essay as a guidepost to the helping professions, most people understand arguably that most nurses, if not all, who entered the healthcare profession during the Vietnam era did so as a response to feeling the need to serve or the felt sense of being called to help (Hood, 2018, pp. 52-53). Successfully navigating an accredited university and training program or obtaining the career track of an associate degree in nursing and passing the national licensure examination requires an undaunted constitution even today. As the profession seeks ways to meet the demand of nursing staff shortages as those same individuals who entered some four to five decades ago (Hood, 2018, p. 80) are now retiring.

In addition to the rigor and unforgiving nature inherent to passing the licensure requirements and persevering and enduring applying for and interviewing for professional career opportunities, most nurses, even today, willingly choose to follow their calling that does not nullify the lived experiences of those nurses who have cared for the most critically ill in our nation's hospitals contributing to the phenomena of professional burn out.

Nevertheless, as other professional academics have written, burning out is not a new concept. According to Kelly et al. (2021), nurses, in general, those involved in direct patient care, not including, for instance, case managers or leaders or hospital education staff nurses, experience professional lassitude, commonly known as burning out.

Nurses experience such descriptions as professional fatigue, mental dysfunction, and sometimes intent to leave the profession, with a jaundiced eye toward the work. It is essential that those who care for others also have resources and can perform self-care.

According to European scholars Callaghan & Waldock (2009), the Oxford Handbook of Mental Health Nursing editors explain the diverse definition of culture. What is known is that people come from many backgrounds that structure their way of living, including but not limited to their personal beliefs and values, the traditions and practices they were taught or learned, including ways of acting and behaving, and their social interactions with people like themselves and of different backgrounds and how to interpret the world around them. As such, one's culture is considered when engaging with those seeking mental health services. Suffice it to state that healthcare providers are not undifferentiated regarding the influence of their cultural background, and the crossroads of culture and mental health in healthcare providers is a topic of increasing visibility.

As a cue and urging for those interacting with mental health service seekers, providers, laypersons, and even leaders can and should be cognizant of and appreciate the diversity of others and work towards achieving faculty and competency in serving them because others have fundamental needs, longings, and hopes for their well-being. In addition, being aware of one's biases can be a barrier to helping those seeking mental health services (Callaghan & Waldock, 2009). Nurses are not immune to the effects of living that others experience, and being a nurse does not automatically ensure immunity from the ailments that affect us all.

Consider the self-care applications and strategies available for nurses who care for those patients who enter the stream needing mental health services. Can those same strategies be applicable, fitting, and relevant to nurses, doctors, and other allied health professionals, or does the profession of helping others give those providers immunity and resistance or embody them impervious to the challenges of life that all encounter?

References:

Callaghan, P., & Waldock, H. (2009). Oxford Handbook of Mental Health Nursing. Oxford University Press.

Fitchett, G. (2002). Assessing spiritual needs: A guide for caregivers. Academic Renewal Press.

Hood, L. J. (2018). Leddy & Pepper's professional nursing (9th ed.). Wolters Kluwer. 

Kelly, L. A., Gee, P. M., & Butler, R. J. (2021). Impact of nurse burnout on organizational and position turnover. Nursing Outlook, 69(1), 96–102. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.outlook.2020.06.008

Us & We

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The Latin phrase "bonum autem facientes non deficiamus tempore enim suo metemus non deficientes" translates to: "But let us not grow weary in doing good, for in due season we will reap if we do not give up" (Latin Vulgate Bible, n.d.). This expression encourages perseverance in doing good deeds, assuring us that there will be rewards for such efforts if we remain steadfast. How do leaders maintain energy, enthusiasm, and perseverance daily and stay committed to doing good deeds for those they steward? Introduce the model of "Us and We" and unlearn "I and Me."

To contribute to the learning and acknowledge a trait tied to leadership that resonates with the concept of team building, authentic leadership aims to address putting the interests of others before a leader's self-interest. Without subtracting from scholars, the credit applied to Steffens et al. (2021) suggests that leaders who are in tune with their moral compass, able to highlight their value system, and simultaneously identify with their shared community enable their followers to perceive them as genuinely authentic.

Of course, one should hope that organizational influencers put others' interests before self-interest in an ideal situation, and it is not impossible to think of cases where the contrary has increased. As organizational citizens, it is postulated that rules, regulations, and laws are not needed to govern others; instead, someone is required to help empower others.

According to Steffens et al. (2021), leaders stay true to themselves in four distinct ways. First, they are aware of themselves and how they act, behave, and appear in the world; in basic terms, self-awareness is a characteristic. Second, an authentic leader can be transparent, interpersonally vulnerable, and visible to others. Third, authentic leaders are open to the ideas of others and welcome thoughts contrary to their own. Finally, their value and belief systems regulate organizational decision-making.

In summary, psychologists Steffens et al. (2021) have found that if the aforementioned character traits exist in leaders who aim for an authentic style of influence, organizational achievement improves, employee exhaustion and fatigue are lower, and employees engage in the work.

References:

Latin Vulgate Bible. (n.d.). The Epistle of St. Paul to the Galatians: Chapter 6:9. https://latinvulgate.com/verse.aspx?t=1&b=9&c=6

Steffens, N. K., Wolyniec, N., Okimoto, T., Mols, F., Haslam, S. A., & Kay, A. (2021). Knowing me, knowing us: Personal and collective self-awareness enhances authentic leadership and leader endorsement. The Leadership Quarterly, 32(6). https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/z2r7f

Tedium Vitae

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What is mental health, or what does it mean to have good mental health? It is helpful to understand definitions. World Health Organization provides an overall umbrella term for mental health that scholars such as Fusar-Poli et al. (2020) capture by defining it as such: when good mental health is present, the vital life force of a person can be focused such that an individual can actualize their skills and capabilities such that they can manage and engage with the usual difficulties and adversities in life that all persons experience as well as being able to maintain and engage in a constructive and generative existence and create, promote and uplift their community.

Agonizingly, the following data may surprise the reader. One out of every five adults, ages 18-64, in the past year have experienced an episode of mental dysfunction adversely affecting the way they show up in the world, and suicide has increased in young children ages 10 to 24 as a leading cause of death in America (SAMHSA, n.d.) Additionally, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (n.d.) reports that roughly fifty million adults ages eighteen and older have reported some mental health disturbance since the pandemic.

What is more known is that Lloyd-Jones and McKibbin (2018), contributors to standard medical textbooks, state that health promotion aims to prevent the risk factors that propagate disease. As such, the absence of disease is not equivocal with being healthy. Health promotion involves screening for risk factors and educating others to improve their health, not just prolonging one's life.

A prolonged life with a disability is not ideal nor conducive to the quality of life of an individual without a limiting disability. Elements of one's life include the physical and psychological aspects (Lloyd-Jones & McKibbin, 2018) and the spiritual (Cook, 2022) because often when people get ill, they rely on their faith/values and beliefs to weather life's difficulties.

In a novel article, Population Mental Health Science: Guiding Principles and Initial Agenda, Dodge et al.(2024), a prominent psychologist at Duke University, highlight the significance and reality of population and societal mental health. Suppose the purpose and goal of medical intervention are to avert the occurrence of sudden death from preventable causes, for instance, sudden death from a cardiac event, according to Lloyd-Jones & McKibbin (2018). In that case, the goal of mental health intervention is to prevent dying of desperation and hopelessness (Dodge et al., 2024).

Furthermore, Dodge et al. (2024) inform us that mental health challenges persist as a population health concern as people struggle with, to name a few, life stressors such as the inability to secure food for themselves, ethnic displacement from the home country of origin, global economic uncertainty, and the never-ending natural disasters contribute to and exacerbate peoples inability to cope with life's challenges as adults that have trickled down to the nations youth who also bear the burden of struggling with their mental health.

Is a sense of purpose a strategy for adapting to life's adversities? Scholars and faith-based professionals explain purpose as it relates to the lifespan. According to Rick Warren, author of the popular Christian book The Purpose Driven Life (Warren, 2002), the opening pages get right to the point by first acknowledging that purpose related to one's life is not self-oriented but connected to God's higher purposes for us as we are connected to other individuals.

Let us consider other academics as well. According to Kashdan et al. (2023), another academic in the study of psychology, in their illuminating article Purpose in Life: A Resolution on the Definition, Conceptual Model, and Optimal Measurement, they point to purpose, describing egocentric and altruistic purposes for living. For example, the authors describe egocentric purposes for self-furtherance and self-securing in contrast to other-oriented purposes to benefit society.

Biblical scholars have addressed the motif of purpose in life as well. According to Ryken et al. (1998), a quest is a journey, a search, or a person's experiential story that can be interpreted as an individual purpose. The personal venture or pursuit involves physical exertion and often mental fortitude to accomplish and complete the tasks set out either by the individual or as a means of competitiveness, for proving oneself or searching for meaning as it relates to the lifespan.

Suppose we consider the elements of a purpose-driven life oriented to serving others despite encountering life difficulties, as Szasz (1960) describes. Can strategies or conceptualizations be incorporated into one's life to ameliorate the adverse effects of poor mental health as a response to improving the wellness and mental health of individuals, neighborhoods, and the greater community?

Neuroscientists believe answers exist. According to those who are subject matter experts in the study of neuroscience and biology, Fusar-Poli et al. (2020) inform us that the fundamental goal of psychological well-being is to improve upon individual logic and thought and mental reasoning, increase the ability of persons to perform activities to support the psyche and instill skills and behaviors with resources for stimulating personhood resiliency.

14 Spheres of Psychological Health Promotion

The following fourteen spheres of mental health promotion are distilled below and necessary to address the overall population's mental health crisis. They are geared toward young adults but applicable to all ages.

First, understanding mental health vocabulary through education and training to help others be able to advocate for themselves and seek healthcare resources by recognizing the manifestation of adverse mental health symptoms and improving behaviors toward mental health are integral. Next, by reducing the stigmatization and negative attitudes toward others with mental illness through personal advocacy and mentorship relations with young adults (Fusar-Poli, 2020), the population's mental health can improve. Additionally, instilling values and beliefs about mental health through bolstering individual self-esteem and finding value in one's contribution to life despite managing mental health challenges is lacking.

How can coaches, teachers, even university professors, the local dentist, church groups, and other community services personnel be trained, certified, and well informed as unorthodox and progressive means and measures to support the current overwhelmed and flooded demand for mental healthcare clinicians as Dodge et al. (2024) suggest?

Fusar-Poli et al. (2020) highlight the connections to optimal mental health by helping young adults promote high-level mental governing skills. Also critical and invaluable are the training and education platforms that encourage school and work performance in today's youth and emerging young adults. Managing feelings by assisting others in understanding their emotional response to situations and experiences and helping others understand their conduct in response to environmental stimuli, either positive or negative, are supportive measures. Self-direction and efficacy training are needed to help individuals face and engage with life challenges, opportunities, and possibilities. If performed well, interpersonal relationship mentoring and training to help individuals understand social, cultural, and ethnic signals and hints in personal relationships optimize the population's mental health.

Finally, helping individuals to formulate, cultivate, and connect through family and peer support connections promotes sound mental health. Most pointedly, addressing the interrelation of physical strength and vigor through sports activities and active play and extracurricular time, nutrition, sleep, and rest habits to support mental well-being is just as vital to supporting the sexual health of young adults with training through intimate partnership education. Helping individuals connect meaning in life through challenges and defining quality of life-related to experiential fulfillment can support the effort to reduce the barriers to optimal mental health and, by extension, address the growing concern of population mental health challenge (Dodge et al., 2024 & Fusar-Poli et al., 2020).

References:

Cook, C. C. H. (2022). Spirituality and Religion in Psychiatry. In Spirituality and Psychiatry (2nd ed., pp. 1–22). Royal College of Psychiatrists.

Dodge, K. A., Prinstein, M. J., Evans, A. C., Ahuvia, I. L., Alvarez, K., Beidas, R. S., Brown, A. J., Cuijpers, P., Denton, E., Hoagwood, K. E., Johnson, C., Kazdin, A. E., McDanal, R., Metzger, I. W., Rowley, S. N., Schleider, J., & Shaw, D. S. (2024). Population Mental Health Science: Guiding Principles and Initial Agenda. American Psychologist, 79(6), 805–823. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0001334

Kashdan, T. B., Goodman, F. R., McKnight, P. E., Brown, B., & Rum, R. (2023). Purpose in life: A resolution on the definition, conceptual model, and optimal measurement. American Psychologist. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0001223

Lloyd-Jones, D. M., & McKibbin, Kathleen M. (2018). Promoting good health. In J. Larry Jameson & Anthony S. Fauci & Dennis L. Kasper & Stephen L. Hauser & Dan L. Longo & Joseph Loscalzo (20th Eds., Vol. 1), Harrison's principles of internal medicine (pp. 8–13). McGraw-Hill Education.

Fusar-Poli, P., Salazar de Pablo, G., De Micheli, A., Nieman, D. H., Correll, C. U., Kessing, L. V., Pfennig, A., Bechdolf, A., Borgwardt, S., Arango, C., & van Amelsvoort, T. (2020). What is good mental health? A scoping review. European Neuropsychopharmacology, 31, 33–46. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euroneuro.2019.12.105

Ryken, L., Wilholt, J. C., Longman III, T., Duriez, C., Penney, D., & Reid, D. G. (Eds.). (1998). Quest. Dictionary of Biblical Imagery (pp. 690–692).

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. (n.d.). Mental health: Get the facts. SAMHSA. https://www.samhsa.gov/mental-health/what-is-mental-health/facts

Szasz, T. S. (1960). The Myth of Mental Illness. The American Psychologist, 15(2), pg. 113–118. 

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (n.d.). Mental illness. National Institute of Mental Health. https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/mental-illness

Warren, R. (2002). The Purpose Driven Life. Zondervan.