Testing the effects of an empowerment-based leadership development programme: part 2 - staff outcomes

Abstract

Aim: To determine if nurse leaders' attendance at a leadership development programme based on an empowerment framework would increase staff perceptions of organisational support and organisational commitment.

Background: Leadership empowering behaviours are teachable relational competencies that have been associated with quality leader-staff relationships and positive staff outcomes.

Methods: A quasi-experimental, pre-test-post-test design was used to compare perceptions of staff whose leaders participated in a year-long leadership programme with staff of similar leaders who did not attend the programme. A series of multiple regression analyses were used to test the conceptual model of programme effects.

Results: Leaders' programme participation was directly associated with greater staff organisational commitment 1 year after the programme. Both programme attendance and leader-empowering behaviours were found to act as independent catalysts for staff empowerment, with structural empowerment partially mediating the effects of leader empowering behaviours on organisational commitment.

Conclusions: Leader participation in a development programme based on an empowerment framework may be an important means of increasing staff organisational commitment, a key predictor of staff turnover.

Implications for nurse management: Leadership development programmes should emphasize relational competencies, including leader empowering behaviours, given their potential for enhancing organisational commitment.

Keywords: empowerment; leader empowering behaviours; leadership; nursing.