Many nurses vie for leadership roles that offer opportunities to grow and boost the hospitals and clinics they work at. However, earning such roles takes lots of work. More importantly, you must learn many skills that nobody will teach you in nursing school.

You can only learn these skills through experience, and that takes time. Such experience makes you a better nurse and sets you up for a future nursing leadership role. Follow along as we highlight some of the key soft skills you must learn to excel in a nursing leadership role.

Nurse Leader Skills That Can’t Be Taught

Your educational journey doesn’t end when you graduate nursing school and become licensed. If anything, the start of your career is the most important learning period of your nursing career. This is when you will learn unteachable skills that can eventually make you a great nurse leader, such as:

Instinct

Trusting your instinct is a big part of making decisions that affect your fellow nurses. This can also have an impact on how you treat patients, as well as their recovery. However, it takes many nurses a while to build trust in their instincts, and that’s nothing to be ashamed of.

That’s because practical on-the-job experience is essential to strengthen your intuition. This explains why nurse leaders with years of experience can seemingly effortlessly make decisions and recommendations. Their wealth of knowledge and experience goes into each decision they make, and that’s a soft skill that no book can teach.

If you can’t trust yourself, how can the nurses below you trust your decisions? Trusting your instinct and confidently making decisions is essential to nurse leadership as it sets a great example.

Professional Synergy

Nurse leaders don’t just lead the other nurses; they work closely with them. The collaborative nature of nursing means that the leader up top must set a strong example. Professional synergy works wonders to nurture a positive and productive environment.

Think about all the times you had to lean on your fellow nurses upon entering the workforce. Young nurses learn the importance of synergy and teamwork when they need help. After all, nursing is a tough profession at times, and asking for help or collaborating with your peers can lighten the load.

You can maintain a positive work environment if you continually encourage teamwork as a nurse leader. Set an example of positive collaboration to encourage the other nurses to build teamwork skills without even saying a word.

Otherwise, you can share examples of how important it is to be on the same page and ask for help as needed. After all, whatever helps the patient is the most important thing, no matter who came up with it.

Adaptability

As a nurse, you will occasionally get thrust into an unknown situation. Whether it be a rare condition, injury, or patient behavior, you must act on your feet. You won’t be able to work your way up to a leadership role if you can’t adapt to unique and even uncomfortable situations.

Great leaders must embrace such positions head-on and find a solution. This involves changing course and making snap decisions for the better of your patients and fellow nurses. No teacher or textbook can provide this knowledge, but it’s invaluable in a clinical setting.

Self-Care

Caring for others is at the core of all nursing positions, including nurse leaders. However, you can’t forget to take care of yourself, especially when you hold a leadership position. You can’t teach self-care as everyone has unique needs and struggles that affect them in the workplace.

Prospect nurses get their first taste of the intense demands of nursing during their clinicals. Upon entering the workforce, you will quickly learn the toll that long hours and sometimes stressful situations bring. You cannot excel as a nurse leader if you can’t care for yourself.

Failure to eat, hydrate, and sleep enough will set a bad example for the nurses below you. It’s also important to keep track of your mental health and find healthy ways to address anxiety and depression.

Keeping the Peace

The challenging, fast-paced nature of nursing sometimes leads to conflicts in the workplace. By the time you earn a nurse leadership role, you’ve likely been around or involved in a few conflicts. Strong nurse leaders recognize that conflict is sometimes part of the job, but that doesn’t mean they let it continue.

One of your unspoken duties as a nurse leader is to recognize and hopefully resolve conflicts when they occur. That doesn’t mean you must get in the middle of things, as that may escalate things. Instead, you can help foster positive communication so the involved parties can articulate themselves.

By doing this, you can provide a chance for each person to air their grievances without interruption. Great leaders can help resolve conflict from a place of empathy instead of “right and wrong.” This is essential in high-stress workplaces, and it only comes with experience.

Nursing is a Learning Journey

You never stop learning as a nurse from the time you enter nursing school until the day you retire. The intangible, subtle skills you develop along the way only serve to make you the best nurse you can be. While you can “phone it in” and rest on your laurels, you will struggle to earn a nurse leadership role if you don’t expand your practical skillset.

Nursing leaders have the important responsibility of passing these skills along to others. At the very least, they can foster an environment where their fellow nurses can continue to learn. You can eventually pave the way for other nurses to excel in leadership roles through empathy and patience.