The Importance of Relational Skills in the Management of the team in the Healthcare Sector, With Particular Reference to the Nurse Leader Role: An opinion

Introduction

The clinical nurse leader is an innovative new role for meeting higher health‐care quality standards. What are the personality characteristics that the nurse leader must possess in order to get the right balance in a working group? The importance of technical skills is fundamental and essential in the management of an operational unit, but the latter is made up of people and therefore an efficient vision in an organization certainly has positives but is not enough to ensure the success of the working group [1-4]. Given these premises, it is essential to have tools useful for understanding interpersonal relationships, with a particular focus on conflict management. In a working group, where people have not been chosen, there are implicit and explicit rules, in which different cultural characteristics, personalities and professionalism coexist. Some dynamics can be an obstacle to good interaction, becoming an easy battleground if they are mismanaged.

If the nature of leadership is properly relational, its core quality is in mobilizing all those involved in this relationship , and the positive and creative alliance with the others constitutes its authentic value, from which it is deduced that relational skills are equally fundamental so that there is a greater chance of ensuring the good functioning of the group. Often the degeneration of interpersonal dynamics also lies in a lack of knowledge both of the fundamentals of human communication, and of the way of interpreting and perceiving events, from which blurred and obtuse readings of reality emerge [4-8]. On the contrary, being aware of ourselves and the ways of communicating and interacting, as well as our being in a relationship, would help us to improve or limit the repetition of the same mistakes both in us and in the relationship with the members of the working group. An interpretive and clarifying reading to help us better understand our interactions to which we refer is the theory of attachment. The theory of attachment provides a theoretical and evolutionary explanation of human development and how the first relational experiences in the evolutionary period can remain imprinted implicitly in the mind, generating typical models of reaction to the environment in adulthood; hence the specific usefulness that we can provide in observing human relationships in the workplace [9-13]. The attachment system is always present in us and permeates our life and relationships, at the same time the search for the “secure base” determines and influences our personality and it is useful to the understanding of interpersonal dynamics, including those underlying the rise of conflicts. If we transfer these postulates within the working context in the health environment, the search for the secure base by a member of the working group will be identified in the nursing coordinator and in the relationship he establishes with it. If these expectations are met, the report will be adequate and expectations will be met. Where both the characteristics of the coordinator and those related to the working group are not met, misunderstandings will arise that will often exist in conflicting relationships [14-16]. Cognitive-behavioral theory, whose basic model is based on the existing relationship between thoughts, behaviors and emotions/bodily sensations, capable of interacting on one another and influencing each other, also offers us a further explanation of how each thought can influence or determine the experience and emotional regulation and consequently, the emission of a specific behavior.

In turn, these three factors are immersed in a circular procedural dimension within which the mutual influence of such mental processes can generate vicious or virtuous circuits of action and feedback, which are finally expressed externally in complex behavioral patterns. The emission of a behavior will enter into a feedback relationship with the environment with which one interacts, determining the observation of the response to one’s own behaviors and a new level of perception and interpretation of oneself in interaction and of the other with which one interacts, which may or may not be consistent with the existing inner expectations. Finally, the theory of communication, in that, the latter is one way “a conditio sine qua non” of human life and social order, with particular attention to the axioms of the Palo Alto group, provides a reading of the communication dynamics behind human interaction, the pivotal process on which the humanities rests. Relational skills can be learned and can be transferred in any context of daily life and serve to improve the quality of communication within the working environment [17-18].

In the light of what it has been explained by the psychological theories to which we referred, once these skills have been learned, the coordinator will be able to “see” the group and recognize in it a human potential with the advantages and disadvantages given by the plurality of people with different professionalism. This plurality of people can be turned in the way to contribute to the strengthening of interpersonal skills either offering mutual emotional support or helping to develop new ways of relating and communicating, enriching one’s cultural background. Moreover these objectives will be reached: coordination given by a recognized leader, a common goal for all the subjects of the team, the interdependence between individuals, the collaboration between the members of the group and the need for belonging to the team. In conclusion, technical skills are necessary to manage an organizational unit, but without a good relationship, in which the dynamics of prevarication are contained, that ideal climate that can motivate individuals to either personal and working growth will not be created.

References

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• Bateson G (1972) Steps to an ecology of mind, Chandlers Publishing Company.
• BECK A (1993) Cognitive Therapy : Nature and Relation to Behavior Therapy. J Psychother Pract Res Fall 2(4): 342-356.
• Bowen DE (1986) Managing customers as human resources in service organization. Human Resources Management. Brown JS, Duguid P (1991) Organizational Learning 25(3): 371-383.
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• Hopkinson SG, Oblea P, Napier C, Lasiowski J, Trego LL (2019) Identifying the constructs of empowering nurse leader communication through an instrument development process.  J Nurs Manag 27(4): 722-731
• Rashkovits S (2019) The importance of the nurse leader's proactivity and intellectual stimulation in the nursing team workload-learning relationship: A cross-sectional study. J Adv Nurs Nov 75(11): 2647-2658
• Taras M.A., Il nursing coordinator. The importance of relational skills in teamwork, Lulu Press Inc, Morrisville NC USA.
• Van Der Horst FCP, Zetterqvist Nelson K, Van Rosmalen L, Van Der Veer R (2019) A tale of four countries: How Bowlby used his trip through Europe to write the WHO report and spread his ideas. J Hist Behav Sci 56(3): 169-185.