Book Reads: Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts

By Wendy Wieneke RN, MS,N Nursing Administration Graduate Student, University of Texas at Arlington, Graduation December, 2020.   

My inspiration to pursue a degree in nursing administration stems from my desire to be the effective leader that I feel is so desperately needed in healthcare today. This program has taught me the value of evidenced-based practice, financial management, and how to effectively perform research, but I was always looking for a guide on effectively leading people. I finally found that in Brene’ Brown’s book, Dare to Lead. I have learned that being an effective leader is two-fold process for me: working on myself and working for others.

Working on myself is the more challenging and scarier of the two tasks and addresses the American Organization of Nurse Executives (AONL) competency of professionalism and specifically personal journey disciplines and foundational thinking skills (AONL, 2015). As a child, I learned to “armor up” early as a means to protect myself from the disappointment, hurt, and feelings of being unlovable and invisible (Brown, 2018). This armor has been with me a long time, and I, admittedly, have carried it to adulthood. But if I am to be an effective leader, I must commit myself to shedding the armor so that I can feel empathy, emotion, and vulnerability with and around those I hope to someday lead. I have worked for leaders who expected perfection, complete and total disregard for oneself, placement of the organization above every other obligation, and who held all the power over subordinates. What they were hoping to achieve was conformity, obedience, and success, and what they got in return was resentment, failure, and low productivity. So, working on myself and working my pain out on my own and not on others (Brown, 2018) is the first order of business.

Working for others is the part of leadership I am the most excited about. Brown (2018) extensively discusses ways daring leaders behave, and I am looking forward to bringing these refreshing ideas to my future role. Allowing for a time out, responding with “say more,” “painting done,” using a TASC approach, helping others find and grow their value, being a learner from others, getting it right instead of being right, and modeling clarity, kindness, and hope (Brown, 2018) are just a few of the ideas that stuck out to me. These address the AONL competency of communication and specifically relationship management and diversity (AONL, 2015). I come away from this read understanding that leadership is not about power over others, but about simply being a human being and treating others with respect, integrity, kindness, and compassion.

I also came away with suggestions for future reads: Self-compassion: Stop beating yourself up and leave insecurity behind by Dr. Kristen Neff and Be the boss everyone wants to work for: A guide for new leaders by Bill Gentry. These two books, more than all the others, seem to address the two areas of working on myself and then working for others that stood out as actionable items from this reading exercise.

References
AONL (2015). Nurse executive competencies. https://www.aonl.org/system/files/media/file/2019/06/nec.pdf (Links to an external site.)

Brown, Brene. (2018). Dare to lead. Random House.