Transforming nursing: A series on nursing leadership — Transformational leadership

This sixth installment of the series explores the leadership style known as transformational leadership, which is all about the leaders inspiring their teams through motivation and empowerment. Staff members with transformational leaders are said to be high performers, and the benefits for them and the organisations are high, but of course, as with all styles, this type of leadership also comes with some flaws and issues. This article looks at what transformational leadership is and explores the positives and negatives, concluding with an expert opinion of a senior nurse leader.

The leadership styles this series explores are:

• Authentic leadership
• Authoritarian (autocratic) leadership
• Compassionate leadership
• Collective leadership
• Transformational leadership
• Transactional leadership

Transformational leadership is a style that focuses on the employees of an organisation. Labrague and Obeidat (2022) suggest that leaders who practise transformational leadership are focused on ensuring their followers are