leadership topics listed below for education for nurses

Personal Development Plan: Emotional Intelligence
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Abstract
Inspired by the buzz around emotional intelligence, this paper provides a personal development plan for teaching novice nurses to grow their core emotional intelligence skills. These skills are self-regulation, motivation, social skills, empathy, and self-awareness. The competencies were selected because they help novice nurses to understand their emotions, honestly gauge their weaknesses and strengths, and work hard to overcome these weaknesses. Additionally, these competencies are vital for nurses considering the technicality of their profession and need of experience. While basing its focus on these five essential skills, this paper finds that novice nurses should show a genuine desire to embrace changes and become better nurses and leaders. Such genuine desire is possible through a series of actions such as working under a mentor, being assertive and confident, exercising self-examination, taking responsibility, being sensitive to the work environment, learning from past mistakes, managing stressful workplace conditions, and embracing continuous improvement.
Keywords: self-regulation, motivation, social skills, empathy, self-
awareness

Introduction
My journey as a nurse leader is full of several learning opportunities. Though many years have passed now, I still remember when I first got a job as a trainee nurse at a local hospital with vivid recollection. Coming from a class or theory-based situation to a real-life hospital situation was not easy for me.

I found myself inadequate due to the immense pressure coming from my seniors as well as the high expectations from patients. To cope with this situation, I had to strike a balance between these opposing forces. Also, the skills I learned during my training were very helpful in helping me cope with most practical elements of my career as a nurse. Despite the several challenges, I would later develop a strong liking for my job. Looking back, I realize that developing emotional intelligence skills helped me to cope with my workplace environment. However, I firmly believe that novice nurses should not undergo a similar situation. Instead, they should be subjected to a formal learning environment to acquire and nurture these skills gradually.
Five Major Learning Areas for Novice Nurses
Novice nurses should understand and be familiar with their work environment to become more emotionally intelligent. Evidence drawn from the seminal work done by Goleman (1995) shows that novice nurses can grow their emotional intelligence skills by learning and practicing the following skills: self-regulation, motivation, social skills, empathy, and self-awareness. Each of these skills has a specific area of emotional intelligence that it seeks to build. For example, Goleman (1995) shows that self-awareness leads to understanding one’s emotions, honestly gauging their weaknesses and strengths, and working hard to overcome the shortcomings. Moreover, self-regulation skills help individuals to become thoughtful, careful and have the ability to regulate and overcome their emotional impulses in a manner that builds their confidence and better decision-making (Olejarz, 2017). When individuals become more thoughtful and careful, they are likely to control their less crucial feelings and needs for future gratification.
On its part, motivation skills allow an individual to take up challenges and have the willpower to postpone immediate pleasure for long-term success. Goleman (2009) shows that when people have the willpower to delay instant gratification for long-term gain, they are likely to be emotionally stable. Yet such emotional strength requires individuals to be more aware of their feelings and exercising restraint when fulfilling those feelings. Further, motivation skills offer empathy to acknowledge the needs, wants, beliefs, and opinions of others even when those feelings are not visible. Such skills help a person to have better listening, loving and caring skills (Olejarz, 2017). Finally, social skills allow an individual to become better team players, conflict managers, communicators, leaders, and motivators. As Goleman (1995) shows, having and nurturing social skills help individuals to fit well in diverse work situations. Overall, a combination of the five primary emotional intelligence competencies can help transform novice nurses into nurse leaders who can impart positive experiences to their patients and fellow nurses at the workplace.
Learning Emotional Intelligence Skills
Mentorship can build emotional intelligence skills and help novice nurses transition to nursing leaders. Goleman (1995) shows that people can learn and grow their emotional intelligence by working closely with accomplished mentors. Considering that mentorship is a very crucial part of a nurses training curriculum (Smith, Carpenter & Fitzpatrick, 2015), novice nurses can quickly grow their emotional intelligence skills by working under mentors during their early days at the hospitals they are attached. A typical mentorship program should allow the novice nurses to learn from their mentors and overcome their weaknesses. As Goleman (2009) shows, this grows their self-regulation and motivation skills. They become increasingly motivated because they can quickly overcome their shortcomings without being subjected to immense pressure which may end up denting their confidence and making them less productive. Even so, Koubova and Buchko (2013) warn that novice nurses should be allowed to select their mentors and learn at their own pace. Such freedom will allow for more fulfilling and gradual learning experiences in the workplace. Moreover, self-selection of mentors enhances learning because novice nurses can connect more with mentors that they selected themselves than when they are forced to work with preselected mentors.
Personal examination and reflection can also help novice nurses grow their emotional intelligence skills. Evidence from Goleman (2009) work shows that professionals such as nurses can build their emotional intelligence skills by monitoring their reaction to other people, evaluating their social skills, keenly monitoring their environment, taking responsibility, and most importantly, observing their responses to both stressful and less stressful situations. These actions can help novice nurses to become more aware of their emotions, understand the implications of such feelings, and determine how they affect other people. As Koubova and Buchko (2013) show, such deep understanding will yield positive effects – will make novice nurses more empathetic, sociable, and better decision-makers. The core goal of any personal examination activity should be to highlight strengths and weaknesses as well as devise ways of harnessing the strengths to mitigate the effects of the identified deficiencies. As Mortiboys (2013) provides, personal examination is part of becoming more aware of one’s feelings and being in a position to manage those feelings well, and this touches on the self-regulation skills, which form a core portion of emotional intelligence.
Continuous learning and improvement are also essential. Goleman (1995) sweeping postulation that emotional intelligence is a dynamic construct supports the view that novice nurses should continuously make efforts to learn and manage their changing feelings, needs, and perceptions as well as those of the people they interact with at the workplace. Such an approach requires continuous learning and improvement – discarding old habits and desires in the fact of emerging feelings, perceptions, needs and wants (Olejarz, 2017). Mentors, supervisors, peers, and leaders should play a critical role in helping novice nurses discover these emerging social trends and selecting a set of appropriate responses. Even so, Kelly (2016) shows that graduate nurses should be given ample space to learn at their own pace and follow their specific passion. That way, they can find continuous learning enjoyable and fulfilling to their growing nursing career. This argument draws from Smith et al. (2015) assertion that the nursing profession is broad and dynamic. As expected, this high level of dynamism calls for emotional intelligence skills such as self-awareness and motivation which in turn enhances self-reflection and continuous learning.
Graduate nurses should become more sensitive to their work environment. Evidence drawn from the work of Sallie-Dosunmu (2016) shows that graduate nurses can learn humility skills if they become more aware and sensitive to their work environment. When people become sensitive to the small details that characterize their work environment, they are likely to acknowledge and appreciate the input made by others and gain crucial insights on how they can positively contribute towards the overall performance targets that their organization has set. Mortiboys (2013) shows that genuine humility comes in the form of not seeking attention for one’s accomplishments and allowing other people at the workplace to flourish and take credit for their achievements. People with high level of humility are confident and are not shy to take up challenging workplace tasks or even take part in group activities. Overall, Kelly (2006) shows that when people demonstrate humility skills, they are likely to be more aware of their workplace environment. While going back to the graduate nurse situation, it is arguable that becoming aware of one’s workplace environment is a good determinant of emotional intelligence skills such as socialization and empathy.
Also, graduate nurses should learn how to take responsibility. Goleman (1995) shows the most practical way to build emotional intelligence for a professional such as graduate nurse is always to take responsibility for all actions at the workplace. Taking responsibility could take the form of apologizing to others when one hurt their feelings and resolving conflicts between colleagues at the workplace. Further, assuming responsibility could take the form of accepting to be corrected by seniors when one falls short of the set performance targets. Even so, Sallie-Dosunmu (2016) shows that apologizing and agreeing to be corrected should not be seen as a sign of weakness but a sign of maturity and professionalism. The author indicates that seniors at the workplace are always willing to correct their juniors and encourage them to work hard yet some juniors may feel intimidated or belittled when being corrected. As Smith et al. (2015) show, this should be the case for graduate nurses considering that the nursing profession embraces mentorship-based learning. In this regard, it is justified to conclude that taking responsibility and accepting to be corrected should be part of every day’s learning activity for graduate nurses.
Even so, novice nurses should as well learn to be assertive. Mortiboys (2013) warns that gaining high levels of emotional intelligence does not mean that professionals such as novice nurses should always be submissive when faced with hostile workplace situations. The author shows that professionals should be assertive and able to stand their grounds especially when they are entirely on the right side. Being proactive and assertive should be part of socialization skills that novice nurses should practice to become nurse leaders in future. It is crucial to point out that even humility skills should have boundaries and young professionals such as novice nurses should set their limits beyond which they should be encouraged to stand their ground. Sallie-Dosunmu (2016) shows that professionals should be encouraged to politely say “no” without feeling any sense of guilt. Considering that young professionals such as novice nurses may be under pressure to conform with their new organizations’ culture, it is arguable that this clarification applies more to young professionals who are still learning under the guidance of experienced peers. In this regard, novice nurses should be encouraged to set the professional boundaries that they must always guard judiciously. Mortiboys (2013) shows that these boundaries help young professionals to build confidence that they can exploit to face challenges in the workplace.
Novice nurses should learn from their past mistakes. As evidence drawn from the work of Elias and Arnold (2006) shows, that success at the workplace is borne out of the many failures that occur as workers attempt to execute their mandate. While using the example of novice nurses, it is arguable that they are likely to undergo many cases of failures such as making a wrong medical diagnosis, giving the wrong medication to patients or even misplacing patient files. Such mistakes are bound to happen in the workplace even among careful and thoughtful nurses. Mentors and senior managers working with novice nurses should be encouraged to learn from such mistakes even when it is clear that they could have avoided the errors to enhance learning, Past mistakes can form a solid foundation for future learning. Kelly (2016) shows that most exceptional professionals who have realized great success in their respective careers agree that their past mistakes persuaded them to invest more efforts and refine their skills. Consequently, this should happen to novice nurses. Elias and Arnold (2006) show that learning from past mistakes is in tandem with the concept of continuous learning which requires professionals to improve their skills gradually.
Finally, graduate nurses should learn to manage challenging emotions and stressful situations in the workplace. Kelly (2016) shows that stressful situations are inevitable in the workplace especially for young, inexperienced professionals who are transitioning from school environments to work environments. For example, novice nurses who are scheduled for long, night shifts could find it very hard to stay awake the whole night while handling patients suffering from extreme body trauma. Goleman, Boyatzis, and McKee (2013) support this argument by showing that mentors and supervisors should encourage the novice nurses to manage these stressful conditions through sharing with their peers or suppressing the problematic emotions in more fulfilling manner. For example, the novice nurses could be put through regular psychological sessions to help them understand that the stressful workplace conditions are part of the nursing profession. That way, the novice nurses can accept the challenges by attaching positive emotions to the stressing situations.
Conclusion
Looking back, I strongly think that novice nurses should demonstrate a genuine desire to learn better skills for building emotional intelligence. Such passion can be harnessed through personalized nurturing by experienced mentors at the workplace. Specifically, it emerged that the five major skill areas of self-regulation, motivation, social skills, empathy, and self-awareness can offer novice nurses an excellent start for their journey towards becoming nurse leaders in future. Just as my genuine liking for the nursing profession helped me to overcome culture-shock related challenges quickly when I first transitioned from a school-based experience to an actual work environment, novice nurses should as well show a genuine desire to embrace changes and become better nurses and leaders. Discovering and nurturing emotional intelligence will help them achieve this feat. Some of the practical approaches that help novice nurses to grow their emotional intelligence skills include working under a mentor, being assertive and confident, exercising self-examination, taking responsibility, being sensitive to the workplace environment, learning from past mistakes, managing stressful workplace conditions, and embracing continuous improvement.
References
Elias, M. J., & Arnold, H. (2006). The educator’s guide to emotional intelligence and academic achievement: Social-emotional learning in the classroom. Thousand Oaks, Calif: Corwin Press.
Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional intelligence – why it can matter more than IQ. New York: Bantam Books.
Goleman, D. (2009). Working with emotional intelligence, 2nd Edition. London: Bloomsbury Publishers.
Goleman, D., Boyatzis, R., & McKee, A. (2013). Primal leadership, with a new preface by the authors: Unleashing the power of emotional intelligence. Boston: Harvard Business Review Press.
Kelly, Kathleen. (2016). Why is this happening to me? A guide to learning emotional intelligence. London: Balboa Pr.
Koubova, V. & Buchko, A.A. (2013). Life‐work balance: Emotional intelligence as a crucial component of achieving both personal life and work performance. Management Research Review, 36(7), 700-719.
Mortiboys, A. (2013). Teaching with emotional intelligence: A step-by-step guide for higher and further education professionals. London: Routledge.
Olejarz, J.M. (2017). Balance your emotional intelligence skills. Harvard Business Review, March 31.
Sallie-Dosunmu, M. (2016). Using emotional intelligence in the workplace. Alexandria: Association of Talent Development.
Smith, M.J., Carpenter, R. & Fitzpatrick, J.J. (2015). Encyclopedia of nursing education. New York: Springer.