Objective:

To assess the leadership styles of the assistance Nursing professionals and their associated sociodemographic and professional factors.

Materials and methods:

An analytical and cross-sectional study. The sample comprised 75 Nursing professionals and 170 Nursing assistants selected for convenience. The Multifactorial Leadership Questionnaire was applied to assess leadership and the organizational result variables.

Results:

The predominant leadership styles were as follows: transformational (mean of 3.43) and transactional (3.40), which presented high correlation rates with satisfaction, efficacy and additional effort. The leadership style least perceived by the staff was corrective/avoidance (2.10). In transformational leadership, behavioral influence and inspirational motivation presented better scores in the leaders’ self-perception. Age, marital status and having children evidenced statistically significant differences with the transformational and transactional leadership styles; work experience was significant with transactional leadership.

Conclusions:

In their work, Nursing professionals denote encouraging practices that are inherent to transformational leadership, which is related to changes in the organizational culture, leads to motivating and inspiring the subordinates to transcend the routines and increases their satisfaction and commitment to their duties, thus being an important factor in health institutions.

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