Transformational Leadership of Head Nurses and Team Potency in University Hospitals, Shanghai, The People’s Republic of China

Abstract

Head nurses are important in relation to nursing teams’ effectiveness. However, little is known about the relationship between leader’s behavior and team potency. The purposes of this descriptive correlation study were to examine transformational leadership of head nurses and team potency as perceived by nursing teams, as well as to investigate the relationship between transformational leadership of head nurses and team potency in university hospitals, Shanghai, the People’s Republic of China. The sample consisted of 339 nurses representing 113 nursing teams. The research instruments included the Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI) developed by Kouze and Posner (1995, 2002) and the Potency Scale developed by Guzzo et al. (1993). The Cronbach’s alpha coefficients of LPI and Potency Scale were .96 and .92. Data were analyzed by descriptive statistics and Spearman’s rank-order correlation.

The results of this study revealed that transformational leadership of head nurses was at a high level ( = 4.25, SD = 0.58). Approximately 80% of nursing teams perceived team potency at a high level. Transformational leadership of head nurses had a strong positive correlation with team potency (rs = .57, p < .01). The results of the study could provide valuable information for hospital administrators and nurse managers to be aware of the importance of transformational leadership of head nurses and to set up a leadership training program to improve head nurses’ knowledge and skills to lead nursing teams. This will be helpful to optimize nursing teams’ performance.