Florence Nightingale and the transvisionary leadership paradigm

Power utilization and its relative substrate of leadership are essential components of professional change and development. Florence Nightingale, as the philosophical founder of modern, western, secular nursing, utilized a particular type of power now described as transvisionary leadership. This concept is shown to be integral to a larger paradigm designated as the Stairstep Leadership Development Model. By describing the specific type of power utilized by Nightingale, it is then possible to analyze the relevance of these concepts to current professional nursing practice. This article suggests that transvisionary power is utilized in and is as useful in selected situations in nursing today as it was in Nightingale's era.