Leadership Workshop for Nurse Managers’ Around KwaZulu-Natal

The Department of Nursing Science at the University of Zululand (UNIZULU) recently hosted a leadership workshop of nurse managers around KwaZulu-Natal (KZN). Themed: Resilient Leadership: Learning from Crisis”.

The workshop was birthed in 2019, before covid-19. The first workshop was conducted In Pietermaritzburg (PMB) for the Southern side of KZN, this is the second workshop that is being conducted for the Northern side.

The first session of the workshop included the opening and welcoming, a motivational talk about enhancing nurse leader resilience post COVID-19 pandemic and the introduction of the new nursing curriculum which is the R174 Bachelor of Nursing, Postgraduate Diplomas and Postgraduate degree (Masters and Doctorate).

The second and third session included the participants discussing the issues that are affecting the managers at the hospitals as leaders, such as leadership competences. The first presenter, Dr Siphiwe Madlala, began by educating nurses on how a leader must seek opportunities, have a vision, and make sure that people buy in that vision, inspire employee’s achievements, develop interpersonal skills, and becoming accepting and that they must never accept the status core. Nokubonga Mkhwanazi went on to highlight on mutual respect in the workplace. “Respect in a workplace must be a two-way form (from colleagues to patients) mutual respect is demonstrated by being emotionally intelligent whereby it deals with controlling one’s anger, never use foul language, exercise being polite, be helpful to other colleagues, respect people’s privacy, they must be nonjudgmental, finally their communication must be intentional and that managers must respect employees and show appreciation,” she said.  

Furthermore, Anne Joubert, a lecturer in the department of Nursing Science at UNIZULU, emphasized on team building and advised nurse managers the importance of teamwork in the workplace as it benefits the organization because team members that work together can achieve far more than those who work in silos. Teams work is important because its buildups the staff satisfaction and leads to the improvement of the patient’s outcome.

The guest presenter, Dr Sipho Mkhize who is a lecturer of postgraduates studies in Management and Leadership at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), apprised nurse managers on various leadership styles and the transformational leadership style and  focused more on the  transformational leadership whereby the leader inspires employees to achieve extra ordinary outcomes, pays attention to the concerns of the employees and their development needs as it also creates a positive change in employees, inspires people to be able to work as a team and to minimize competition amongst employees. He also continued to explain some weaknesses of a transformational leader.

Talking about the outcome of the workshop Dr Madlala said. “It has been a good workshop so far because the attendance of the Southern side of KZN has been good and we have also anticipated that the Northern side will also be the same”, he concluded.

• Sinenhlanhla Ngcongo