Becoming a nurse faculty leader: facing challenges through reflecting, persevering and relating in new ways.

Aim: The aim of the present study was to explore the experience of becoming a nurse faculty leader.

Background: In a recent interpretation of 23 interviews conducted with nurse faculty leaders from across the United States about their experiences of becoming a leader three themes were identified: being thrust into leadership, taking risks and facing challenges.

Evaluation: This interpretive phenomenological study further explicates three aspects of how nurse educators faced challenges in becoming and serving as a leader.

Key Issues: Facing challenges meant reflecting, persevering through difficulties and learning to relate to others in new ways. Exemplars of participant experiences are provided for concreteness, to assist readers in determining how findings resonate with their own experience and how they can actualize this resonance in their own leadership practice.

Conclusions: In the present study, reflecting, persevering through difficulties and learning to relate with others in a new way was how leaders faced challenges.

Implications For Nursing Management: Leadership development opportunities that facilitate self-exploration, caring and thoughtful interactions with others and values clarification serve as the foundation for becoming a nurse faculty leader who is, in turn, able to build leadership capacity in other individuals and organizations.