Barriers Leading Change

When I think of barriers to leading change, the experience that comes to mind is one that occurred during my first few months as a nurse leader. Though this experience happened many years ago it is one that I think of periodically, and contemplate how I could have been more effective in my leadership style In 2006, the new Chief Nursing Officer (CNO) for our organization announced to the nurse managers that the clinical nursing staff would transition to wearing uniforms and it was our responsibility as leaders to deliver this message to our staff. At the time of this announcement, I was the new nurse manager for the Surgical Intensive Care Unit (SICU) at our organization and had been a staff nurse on this same unit for many years prior.

The first barrier was that this was a hierarchical decision made by a new CNO without input or feedback from staff at the point of service and the message was to be delivered by frontline managers that were not involved in making the decision. The second barrier was that I personally did not understand the reasoning behind this decision and as a longtime member of the SICU team; I did not see how we could possibly keep white tops clean. It concerned me that I would be asking the staff to take their soiled uniforms and specifically their white tops, home to launder. Being a new manager I tried to deliver the CNO’s message, however, my staff could tell that I did not understand or fully support the decision. When the staff questioned this decision I simply told them this was what we had been told to do by the CNO. I was not supportive of her decision and I did not provide my staff with the tools they needed to cope with this change. Needless to say, this was not a popular decision and was not well received by the SICU nursing staff. In hindsight, I needed to seek clarification to understand the why behind this decision. Porter-O’Grady and Malloch state that “The key to thriving in the context of crisis conditions is a strategic ability to anticipate, identify, and respond” (p266). I had not anticipated this change and consequently, I was not prepared to lead the SICU team through this mandated change. I felt as confused and frustrated as my staff. According to Porter-O’Grady and Malloch “If the leader is unable to accommodate the critical variable embedded in the crisis of change, the followers will be no more successful in confronting the demand to change” (p 257). Never the less, the change was made and the uniform policy was put into place but the SICU team was angry and frustrated, unfortunately, I did not lead my team through this change