Leadership Challenges: Capitalizing on Distance and Diversity

Abstract

(41st Biennial Convention) This presentation reports on the leadership challenges encountered when nine geographically and experientially diverse nurse leaders formed a team to co-author a manuscript. Using Authentic Leadership Theory as a framework, the successes and challenges of working in virtual teams are discussed. Over the two year Board Leadership Development Program (BLDP) experience, we communicated our respective experiences via newsgroup and email. Our unique experiences and lessons learned as Fellows led us to develop a reflective perspective of mentoring which was presented at the 41st Biennium. Subsequently, we received a request to convert this presentation into a manuscript. Thus a manuscript team was formed by the 2008-2010 BLDP Fellows. Division of responsibility was determined as team members chose the amount of involvement they wished to have in the manuscript development. A manuscript outline was developed by the Fellow who volunteered to coordinate the project. Each team member selected a portion of the manuscript to write. Publication ethics was a consideration in identifying order of authorship based on each team member's identified contribution. All authors made substantive contributions to the manuscript. Authentic Leadership Theory (Walumba, Avolio, Gardner, Wernsing & Peterson, 2008) points to the factors of insight, initiative, influence, impact and integrity. For any project to be successful, leaders and followers must naturally emerge. A group of leaders working in collaboration often share similar leadership skills and should have equal power in decision making and work distribution. Yet, the roles they fulfill in achieving a stated outcome vary. Our diverse backgrounds provided not only richness, but also allowed each of us to focus on an area of interest and expertise. Processes and challenges are discussed. Walumba, F., Avolio, B., Gardner, W., Wernsing, T., & Peterson, S. (2008). Authetic leadership: Development and validation of a theory-based measure. Journal of Management, 34(1), 89-126. doi: 10.1177/0149206307308913