NR 582NP Week 8 Leadership Portfolio Statement Example

Professional Portfolio Piece: Three Claims About How I Lead, Each With an Occasion Under It, Drawn From the Term's Successes and Its Failures

Student Name

College of Nursing, Chamberlain University

NR 582NP: Leadership and Role Development for Advanced Nursing Practice

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Professional Portfolio Piece: Three Claims About How I Lead, Each With an Occasion Under It, Drawn From the Term's Successes and Its Failures

Claim 1: I Lead by Making the Next Step Small for Someone Else

Occasion: in March, Jordan, a new graduate nurse, was hanging potassium without checking the most recent level. I did not report it. I worked through the next order alongside Jordan, and we found the gap in the order set together. Jordan took the idea to the practice council, and the council added a lab link. Jordan was free to do nothing and did something. This claim comes from my week 2 self-assessment, where the inventory rated me highest on enabling others (Kouzes & Posner, 2017), and the occasion is what tested that rating.

Claim 2: When I Fail to Persuade, It Is Usually Because I Did Not Ask What the Other Person Was Protecting

Occasion: in June, I asked Pat, the day charge nurse, to stop pairing the two sickest patients. Pat listened and changed nothing. I later learned Pat paired them on purpose so that one experienced nurse would hold both. My week 3 conflict analysis and week 7 negotiation brief were both built after this failure: in each, I worked out the other side's interests before writing my own request. In the week 7 brief, I gave the manager's interests more space than mine.

Claim 3: I Prefer to Do the Work and Let Authority Follow

Occasion: watching Teresa build the 02:00 alarm review without a title, described in my week 1 post, changed how I approach change. My week 5 telemetry proposal began with an audit I did myself, on three weekdays, before I asked anyone for anything. When I took the proposal to the manager, I had a count from our own unit: 40% of monitored patient-days without an indication (Sandau et al., 2017). The manager approved two paid hours a month and a quality fund application for the rest, the second option in my negotiation brief.

How These Claims Fit the Role I Am Moving Into

As a nurse practitioner on the cardiology consult service, I will lead without line authority over nurses and with limited authority over physicians. That is the situation all three claims describe. Making the next step small, asking what others protect and doing the work first are, if anything, more useful in the new role than in the old one, because the new role gives me more to ask for and no more power to require it.

Why Only Three Claims

I could list more qualities, but each additional claim would need an occasion, and I have three occasions I can describe in detail: one success with a colleague, one failure with someone above me and one change I carried from an audit to an approval. A fourth claim, such as being a good communicator, would have no occasion under it and would weaken the others by association.

How the Term's Pieces Support These Claims

The week 2 self-assessment supplies claim 1's test and claim 2's failure. The week 3 conflict analysis shows claim 2's lesson applied: I wrote down what each shift was protecting before proposing anything. The week 4 communication plan applies claim 3: I proposed piloting the bedside touch point with willing fellows rather than asking the attending to require it. The week 5 proposal and week 7 brief show claim 3 carried through to a decision. The week 6 transition plan shows where I expect the claims to be tested next: giving orders to nurses I once worked beside.

What a Colleague Would Say

I asked Teresa, whose example started this term, to read the three claims. Teresa agreed with the first and the third, and added to the second: "You also give up too fast when someone says no nicely." That is the same point, from someone who has watched me work for years, and it is now part of claim 2.

What This Statement Does Not Claim

I do not claim to lead well in large groups. I have no occasion for that. My successes are one-to-one or small-team, and my failure was with someone who had more authority than I did. That is the edge of my leadership now. In the new role I will meet larger groups: department meetings, case conferences and committees. I expect my habits to need adjusting there, and I would rather say so than claim a skill I have not shown.

What Changed in How I Ask

At the start of the term, I asked for things by explaining why they mattered to me. Now I ask by explaining what the other person gets and what it costs them, and I prepare a smaller version before I walk in. The telemetry negotiation was the first time I did this deliberately, and it produced a yes to half of what I asked for, which was more than I would have got by asking for all of it with no fallback. It also left the manager willing to hear the next request, which an all-or-nothing ask might not have.

The Occasion I Would Add Next Year

If I write this statement again in a year, I want a fourth claim with an occasion from the new role: a time I persuaded a physician or a group, not just a peer or a manager. I do not have that occasion yet, and I will not claim the skill until I do. When it comes, I will write it down the same week, with the person, the request and what they did, so the claim is built on an occasion and not on memory.

What I Will Do With This

In my first year as a nurse practitioner, I will test claim 2 deliberately and record what happens each time: before every request to someone with more authority than me, I will write down what I think they are protecting and check it with them before making the request. After six months I will count how often my guess was right, which will tell me whether the habit is working. Research on nursing leadership links relational approaches with better outcomes for staff (Cummings et al., 2018), and claim 2 is where my relational habits are weakest.

References

Cummings, G. G., Tate, K., Lee, S., Wong, C. A., Paananen, T., Micaroni, S. P. M., & Chatterjee, G. E. (2018). Leadership styles and outcome patterns for the nursing workforce and work environment: A systematic review. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 85, 19-60. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2018.04.016

Kouzes, J. M., & Posner, B. Z. (2017). The leadership challenge (6th ed.). Wiley.

Sandau, K. E., Funk, M., Auerbach, A., Barsness, G. W., Blum, K., Cvach, M., Lampert, R., May, J. L., McDaniel, G. M., Perez, M. V., Sendelbach, S., Sommargren, C. E., & Wang, P. J. (2017). Update to practice standards for electrocardiographic monitoring in hospital settings: A scientific statement from the American Heart Association. Circulation, 136(19), e273-e344. https://doi.org/10.1161/CIR.0000000000000527