Perceptions of leadership style between nurse managers and their staff in Eastern Saudi Arabia: A cross sectional survey

Background: Understanding nurses’ perceptions about their nurse managers is a crucial element to consider as it helps in the performance of the nurse managers and retention of nurses and reflects the nature of a competent workforce in achieving the organisational goals.Objective: To explore if there is a difference in perceptions of leadership style between nurse managers and their staff and discuss why this occurs.Methods: A cross-sectional descriptive comparative research design was used.Results: Nurse managers rated themselves as using transformational and transactional factors more than the nurses perceived them utilising these various leadership styles. Nurse managers, however, rated themselves lower than nurses in both laissez-faire and management-by-exception-passive.Discussion: The leadership style preferred by the followers is consistently rated higher than the leadership style that their leaders are utilising. Formation of accurate self-perception is a delicate process, especially for people in management positions. Bias in higher self-ratings may occur for several reasons, including gender, which forms the basis of this discussion.Conclusions: The results highlight the need for nurse managers to reflect on their practices and find new ways to enhance their leadership styles.