Exploring the leadership styles of nurse managers in Hail, Saudi Arabia: A cross-sectional analysis

Abstract

Objective: Leadership’s impact in healthcare is crucial as it notably shapes the experiences and performance of nursing staff. This study explores the dominant leadership styles among nurse managers in Hail, Saudi Arabia, as experienced by their nursing staff. The inquiry also examines how these leadership approaches directly influence critical organizational outcomes, including leader effectiveness, employee satisfaction, and staff’s willingness to exert extra effort.Methods: A cross-sectional design involving participants recruited via convenience sampling from four government hospitals in Hail, Saudi Arabia. Data were collected using the 45-item Likert-type Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) and analyzed using SPSS Statistics.Results: Among the 372 nurses analyzed, transformational leadership (2.56 ± 0.75) significantly outscored other styles (p < .001) and had the highest correlation with the leadership outcomes of effectiveness, extra effort, and satisfaction (R2 of 0.828, 0.786, and 0.760, respectively) compared to the transactional and laissez-faire leadership styles. Additionally, linear regression analysis revealed that transformational leadership explained 69% of effectiveness, 61.7% of extra effort, and 58% of satisfaction variances. Within the transformational framework, “inspirational motivation” strongly correlated with positive outcomes.Conclusions: This study emphasizes transformational leadership’s essential role in healthcare, urging nurse leaders to embrace this style, with a focus on strategies that boost motivation. It also recommends that healthcare institutions initiate targeted programs to develop their leaders’ transformational leadership characteristics.