Nurse Leadership: A Matter Of Know, Like and Trust
Published: 31 May 2016
Published: 31 May 2016
It’s as simple as getting people to do things that you need or want done your way. Whether you can influence and inspire others to follow your lead depends on your expertise (i.e. knowledge and skills), your behaviour and your attitude.
In leadership, know, like and trust are fundamental to being able to move the team in the direction you want them to go, whether it be getting them to improve their behaviour when dealing with visiting consultants and relatives of patients, or maintaining a positive culture through massive change.
Know you, like you, trust you factors are terms used by sales and marketing professionals. The premise is that when all things are equal – the price, the quality and the availability of a product – the person with the highest know, like and trust factors will get the sale.
If you want your team to actively support you in achieving your goals, you should want to understand the precepts of the know you / like you / trust you triad.
According to Simon Sinek we are ‘herd animals’ – we work better and achieve more when we come together to achieve a common goal.
According to Albert Mehrabian (2020), only 7% of our communication is the words we speak. Tone, syntax, pitch, volume and speed of delivery etc. account for 38%. That leaves 55% of our communication attributed to our facial expressions or body language. We are communicating even when we are unaware of it.
Empathy is the emotional intelligence skill of being able to see the world from the perspective of another person. It allows us to honour others by being fully present when they speak. Empathy is not necessarily to agree with another, but to respect their right to express their opinion.
In order to practise empathy:
“Trust affects a leader’s impact and the company’s bottom line more than any other single thing” (Horsager 2012).
The universal key performance indicators in healthcare of improved productivity, improved patient care outcomes, improved experience for external customers and improvement to the organisation’s ‘bottom line’ will be more easily achieved when you build these three basic human qualities of like, know and trust.
Janette Cooper is a registered nurse, currently working as a gastroenterology procedure nurse at Noarlunga Hospital. She has a Bachelor of Nursing, a Graduate Certificate in Health Service Management from Flinders University, and a certificate in Gastroenterology Nursing from The Queensland University of Technology. In 2012 she began a life coaching course with The Coaching Institute in Melbourne. It has allowed her to combine her two passions of nursing and personal development. She divides her time between gastroenterology nursing and promoting personal development and leadership by means of frequently published articles through Ausmed, leadership presentations and workshops and coaching health professionals wanting to develop their leadership potential. See Educator Profile