Nursing leadership have been defined as ‘Leadership is walking the fine line between what your organizational needs are versus what the personal needs of may be your employees and your peers ’. (Dyess, 2016). A good nurse leader is someone who can inspire others to work together in the pursuit of a common goal”. (Meliniotis, 2015). “Leadership can be defined as a multifaceted process of identifying a goal or target, motivating other people to act and providing support and motivation to achieve mutually negotiated goals” ( Porter –O’Grady,2003).

Academic leadership is generally viewed as the act of building the community of scholars and the future leaders in any field, which is achieved through faculty empowerment. Review of literature revealed that there are very few studies that have explored the Nursing leaders in nursing education about their lived experience, the significance of the role to them and the meaning of the role or the position. Also those studies were from the west, involving countries like Canada, England, Australia and United States. So far the aspect of studying the experiences and perceptions of the leaders in education in the Middle East, has not been attempted.

A systematic review of the literature was undertaken using the cumulative index to nursing and allied health literature (CINAHL), EBSCOhost and Google scholar databases to get an in-depth knowledge about the topic and aspect focussed in the current study. The key terms used to search and extract data are leadership in nursing, perceptions of leadership, deanship, educational leadership and evaluation of leadership. An extensive review of literature revealed that this topic was very minimally researched.

In the functioning of the educational institution, and the quality of it, is greatly influenced by its leadership. Nurses in every level and other arena are expected to demonstrate leadership qualities. American organisation of nurse executives ( AONE) (2011) has stated the competencies for nurse executives and the nurse educators as five domains, (i) Communication and relationship building, ( ii) Knowledge of the health care environment, (iii) Leadership skills. (iv) Professionalism and business skills. The National League for Nursing’s excellence in nursing education model (2006) delineates the eight core elements in nursing education that is needed to excel in nursing education. The core competency for leaders in the academia are given as task statements as (i) Articulate and promote a vision for nursing education. (ii) Function as steward for nursing, nursing organisation and nursing education. (iii) Embrace professional values in the context of higher education (iv) Develop and nurture relationships (Patterson 2015).

The role of nursing leadership encompasses those attributes that are related to strategic management, operational management, human resource management, academic management, quality of teaching and learning, research performance, community engagement and external stakeholder relationships (Harkins 1998, Bright and Richards 2001, Montez et al, 2003). These roles are influenced by the leaders’ personal attributes like passion, vision, courage, integrity, credibility, adaptability, perseverance, good communication skills, open mindedness, inspiration and commitment.(Harkins 1998,Bright and Richards 2001).

The objective of this study is to determine the attributes of academic leadership that are perceived to be necessary for the leaders in nursing education to be successful and to explore the essence of their experience to function as a successful nursing leader.

The combination of ethnographical and interpretive phenomenological approach was consulted for this study. The advantage being, both interpretive phenomenology and ethnographical approach has the exploratory approach in common. The researcher is considered as the data collection instrument and also both methodology insists the researcher to take a self-conscious approach to the research. The two methodologies use interviews with open ended questions and have narrative description as the raw data. The advantage of combining the ethnographical and phenomenological methodology is that, while the interpretive phenomenology tries to explore and bring out meaning of the narrations explicitly. The ethnographical approach brings out the individual and shared views, values of the predominant culture and to describe the cultural knowledge of the participants. Rapport (2000).

Interpretive phenomenology: It highlights necessarily the need to study the human experience by focusing on the study subjects. In this study, it’s the leader’s subjective experience. By adopting this methodology, the researcher will be able to understand the deeper meaning and the significance of the experience and also the nature of experience that is narrated by the participants. Patterson (2015) adds that the process develops through three different stages: fore-understanding, interrogation and the reflection. As per the stages that are given, the researcher starts the study with a brief understanding of the concept that is wished to be understood and explored. After which, the phenomenon is explored employing the interview and obtaining a narrative description. And once the texts are transcribed, the emerging themes can be analysed.

Ethnography: This methodology was adopted as the researcher intended to explore the routine and daily lives of the nurse leader in the educational university. The study also takes into numerous factors at a time by allowing the leaders to express their cultural influence on their leadership role, the language, the rituals and the relationships that they build in their workplace, with the culture as the common thread, as supported by (Hammersley 1992). Agar ( 1980) states that people do not always do what they say they do , so employing the ethnographic data collection would help the researcher to bring out the inner meaning and to express the significance of their day to day dealings.

The researcher adopts the combination of the methodology by consulting the ethnography and the interpretive phenomenology, so to obtain the closer and the deeper understanding and interpretation of the concept that is researched and the experiences of the nurse leaders.

The ethnographical and narrative phenomenological approach was followed in combination. (Thompson 2000) states that personal testimonies can be used to collect data in depth while dealing with the qualitative studies. Rapport (2000) recommends the use of ethnographical and interpretive phenomenological combination of methodologies by stating that, while exploring the phenomenon under study in terms of the participant group, their cultural background and the day to day experiences can be considered while including the ethnographical approach.

The study used individual interview for extracting and exploring the lived experiences of the leaders in academic field of nursing.

The questions asked during the interview were:

Two of the Nursing institutions in United Arab Emirates was considered as the setting of the study. The participants were the leaders in the nursing program who was currently holding the leadership position at the time of study and also someone who were holding the leadership position in the educational institutes in UAE. A purposive sampling was adopted for the study, which consisted of 10 participants. This study focuses on the lived experience of being the senior academic nursing faculty who are currently in the responsible position of leading the nursing program and responsible for the major aspect of the operation in the nursing education of the institution. The study aims to capture their experience in professional lives, being in the position and functioning so far. The study also lays emphasis on their perception of the leadership attributes which they think is vital, have contributed for them to be identified for this position and entrusted the leadership role.

The interview was transcribed from the digital recording. The themes were identified and analyzed by identifying the repeated statements and phrases about an idea, which revealed the attributes of successful leader and the experience of the leader in nursing education and their perception about the success in their role. The researcher also has incorporated the stages formulated by Ritchie and Spencer (1994). This framework was opted to be consulted because it provides very clear steps in analyzing the breadth of the data derived from the interview. Using this framework, the data was subjected to vital five stages which are (i)familiarization (ii)identification of the thematic framework; (iii)indexing (iv)charting and mapping (v)interpretation.

The familiarization of the data was done by adopting the method of listening to the digitally recorded discussions, transcribing the data, and repeatedly reading the transcribed data. The second stage involves identifying the theme in regard to the data that is obtained. This was achieved by grouping the phrases and the ideas together and differentiating into main theme and the sub themes. The third stage was indexing, which was done by sorting out the data in the transcripts using the identified theme and sub themes. The fourth stage is the charting and mapping where the data is arranged together according to the framework that is used for analysis. The last stage is the interpretation where the complete data set that is sorted, grouped, mapped and are interpreted to find the significance and the meaning of the data, whereby trying to answer the research question and meet the objective of the study.

The aim of the study was to explore the leadership attributes that is essential for the nursing leadership in the Nursing education. Interview yielded attributes that they perceive as vital for any leader in the nursing education program. The most commonly mentioned attributes which includes both personal qualities and the attributes related to the position held is listed in Table: 1.

Table: 1 Attributes of successful leader.

Table :2 Themes and subthemes emerged from the discussions

As expressed by the leaders, it very important to influence the direction of the program and to be successful in the nursing program. For this, they are required to have knowledge about the profession and about the operation of academic nursing program. Other expressions of the participants, nominating the attributes are as follows:

“The important quality of the leader is that they should be supportive to the staff and should be aware of them their strength and use their strength appropriately”

“The leader should be knowledgeable about the management strategies and also people management skills. This is very important because the leader should be able to know how to talk and manage with people to get the work done and also keep them in the constructive mode”

“ .. Should be charismatic because that will iron out any conflicts if arises”

“Being supportive is a very important character for the leader, whatever the situation is, just the feeling that the leader will support me will make the staff to function effectively”

“In my experience I have understood that the 5 important skill set that is expected from the leader I the UAE is to be a (i) Good communicator, (ii) need to have a thirst to move towards excellence, (iii) multitasking ability, (iv) innovator”.

“Some of my personal qualities that has helped me to perform my role as a leader is that ,I’m a good listener, I consult with people expert in the field and also study the feasibility “.

The other attributes are categorized as per the themes and are presented in the form of narrative statements and the exemplars.

The discussions yielded six themes and fifteen subthemes as listed in Table: 2. These overarching themes include subservient leadership, Role preparedness, professionalism, Institutional status, Responsibility without authority and Cultural back ground. Through the participants’ discussion analysis, various sub themes are obtained which is based on the overarching themes.

Academic Nursing can prosper in this field, considering the findings of the study. The findings of the study would inform about the various experiences of the nursing leaders in the educational institution and the attributes needed to function effectively in the role. The results can be utilized by the institutions to recruit personnel with the mentioned attributes and in addition inform the areas where the nursing leaders needed the support from the management to function effectively to their fullest ability.