Fitness and Leadership

So why is it so difficult for us, as nurses, to understand a connection between our health, leadership, and our influence on our patients?

In this series, I want you to look at your leadership in this New Year; the goal is to evaluate your leadership behaviors and to look for opportunities to grow your leadership. I ultimately want you to form successful habits which you can then impact your followers. The star on this preverbal Christmas tree of goodness is that you train another leader to improve themselves too!

This blog post might be a bit challenging for some of us. I apologize right now if you become offended, but sometimes you need a kick to think about a problem to create a desire to change.

As noted in the editorial article in the Journal of Managerial Psychology (2014), in a study conducted 37.2% of nurses were overweight and 28.2% were obese. Concerning is most of them did not identify with either finding. More importantly in this article, it was highlighted that nurse who smoke are less likely to engage their patients on smoking habits or to encourage cessation. This area of physical health is personal for some. Others just ignore the problem or use many excuses for their shortcomings. Trust me; I have used most of them if not all of those excuses. This does highlight a concern that if nurses are to be an example of healthy lifestyle and to encourage that in our patients (Fitness and leadership, 2014), we fail more than we should.

We have all known since the beginning of our healthcare lives that living as much as possible in a healthy condition is not only good for us personally, but we are an example to our patients. I remember one of the first big nursing conventions I attended when I was a nurse of about of 6 years. I was amazed, no really saddened by the number of very overweight nurses at this 10,000 plus convention. It should not have come as a surprise as well when I realized how many of them smoked as well. As adults, we all have choices to make, and I am not judging anyone’s choice.

As nurses, we know that being our patient’s advocate means sharing with them evidenced based approach to living a successful life.

Now how about our leadership? Do you think your physical preparation impacts your ability to lead your team?

As leaders, there is so much demand on your time at work. Meetings are scheduled and rescheduled, you have deadlines for reports, budget decisions need to be made, duty schedules need reviewed, don’t forget you are interviewing new potential hires, you are a key member of your organization’s process improvement meeting today, oh, and the Joint Commission is arriving in 3 weeks. Your days, many times, are not in your control. This doesn’t even take into consideration if you are taking college courses, family requirements, or just eating a normal meal.

I get it.

But the importance of keeping up your physical health has to become a priority for you! I can share from experience that when times get tough, one of the easiest things to drop from my routine is regular exercise. I can also say when that happens, all else seems to slow down and become less effective. And yes, it does affect my leadership. If I am not taking care of myself, how can I take care of my work, my family, my life.

McDowell-Larsen, Kearney, and Campbell (2002) highlight in their article that exercise can help lower psychological stress and acts as a diversion. It effectively lets your mind run free and lowers your stress levels. What is more important is that they also looked at leadership outcomes of leaders and if exercise and keeping physically active and impact. It did! Exercise improves your health, and leadership!

Regular exercise can lower your stress, improve your health, and create a well needed break from the demands of your job. Taking care of your body means you value yourself and you actually care about yourself. It can help maintain your stamina to face the leadership challenges you encounter and it provides your confidence to face those challenges with head on (McDowell-Larsen, Kearney, & Campbell, 2002).

This blog post is a complimentary blog previously written by my friend Sakura. If you did not read her inspiring blog post, please do. She has put all of this into action in her life! A living example that it works, but more importantly it can work for you too!

So what are you waiting for…let’s move together!

Leading with you!

Dean

References:

McDowell-Larsen, S., Kearney, L., & Campbell, D. (2002) Fitness and leadership: Is there a relationship? Regular exercise correlates with higher leadership ratings in senior-level executives. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 17(4), 316-324

Physical fitness in pre-registration nursing students. (2014) Nursing Education in Practice 14, 99-101.

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