When "Terrible" Is Beautiful

Autocratic leadership can be despotism (1). The leader sets the direction, the others follow the direction. In extreme cases, this creates a negative environment in which information and direction find only one way from the leader to the followers. Once nurses adopt this leadership mode, they must ensure that they establish a "benevolent dictatorship" wherever the team's requirements are managed and members are free to send information up the chain of command.

It is easy to dictate once a private World Health Organization is no longer part of the team. Team members can be worried. While the transformative leader collects information from the team to make a choice, the autocratic leader makes a choice based primarily on information available to him or her without much input from the rest of the team (2). It is not laborious to determine how this care-management mode could be called "dangerous."

But there is a time and a place for this leadership. As soon as doctors’ issue medical orders, they are corporal punishment autocratic leadership (3). As soon as nurses perform shift assignments, they provide autocratic leadership. As soon as those same leaders use the input of their team to work out the simplest tasks for team members, they become benevolent autocratic leaders. But once again, some nurses should build a laborious selection as pure autocrats.

No Time for Votes

Autocratic leadership is a kind of leadership selection during crisis management. Due to selections that were not democratically created (4) that have hit a place where tens of thousands of people are killed and the same area is contacted, even inexperienced nurses have been able to manage a disaster or alternative crises. It is part of the general public expectation of our skills and duties as professional helpers. During the first few days of the earthquake in Haiti, a young operating room nurse with less than 3 years of experience suddenly found herself in charge of an accident-related incident involving nearly two thousand victims and a rapid death toll from injuries sustained during quake (5). It was her ability to command and install autocratic leadership that made her a good leader.

Breaking Through the Routine in An Emergency

As the head of a nurse, the World Health Organization has worked in some of the most hostile environments on Earth (6), dangerous things are happening all around us. Plane crashes, multi-vehicle collisions, and terrorist attacks are examples of how a hospital goes from day-to-day operations to crisis mode in seconds. Nurses need to be prepared to acknowledge how the environment has changed and how the new state is dictating the kind of leadership needed to try to achieve the best for most patients.

In a crisis, a nursing team wants autocratic leadership (7), which quickly sets a solid direction, but in a crisis of patients, exhaustion, and hunger, team members can express emotions, and this is the time for transformative leadership to intervene and move forward.

The nurses will hear that the job is often done. They will see the nurse manager working with them facet by facet, experiencing identical psychological and physiological stresses. A good crisis manager can have a strong leadership model that predominantly uses autocratic leadership, but will recognize that to achieve the best, he or she should share alternative concepts and value transformative leadership (8) as soon as it is demanded by the team.

Summary of Time and Money for Dictatorial Administration

As nurses take on shift work, they assume autocratic leadership. Autocratic leadership is a kind of leadership selection during crisis management. Nurses must be prepared to acknowledge how the environment has changed and how the new state dictates the kind of leadership needed to achieve the best for most patients. In a crisis, a nursing team wants autocratic leadership that quickly sets a solid direction, but in a crisis full of patients, exhaustion, and hunger, team members can express emotions, and this is the time for transformative leadership to intervene and move forward.

A good crisis manager can have a strong leadership model that predominantly uses autocratic leadership, but recognizes that to achieve the best, he or she should share alternative concepts and value transformative leadership when required by the team.

References for Time and Money for Dictatorial Administration

Frantz, E., & Stein, E. A. (2017). Countering coups: Leadership succession rules in dictatorships. Comparative Political Studies, 50(7), 935-962.

Choi, S. B., Kim, K., & Kang, S. W. (2017). Effects of transformational and shared leadership styles on employees' perception of team effectiveness. Social Behavior and Personality: an international journal, 45(3), 377-386.

Talbot, S. G., & Dean, W. (2018). Physicians aren’t ‘burning out.’They’re suffering from moral injury. Stat, 7(26), 18.

Chukwusa, J. (2018). Autocratic leadership style: Obstacle to success in academic libraries. Library Philosophy and Practice, 1.

Natareno, K. (2018). Disaster Knowledge and Awareness of Nurses Related to Triage in Mass Casualty Incidents.

Edmonson, C., Bolick, B., & Lee, J. (2017). A moral imperative for nurse leaders: Addressing incivility and bullying in health care. Nurse Leader, 15(1), 40-44.

Nash, S. (2016). Correlational study: Leadership styles, employee empowerment, job satisfaction in a federal agency call site (Doctoral dissertation, University of Phoenix).

Chukwusa, J. (2018). Autocratic leadership style: Obstacle to success in academic libraries. Library Philosophy and Practice, 1.

Remember, at the center of any academic work, lies clarity and evidence. Should you need further assistance, do look up to our Nursing Assignment Help