Knowing Your Preference: The Nexus of Personality and Leadership

Prelicensure nursing students must be prepared to address the new challenges that will confront them in the modern health care environment. Leadership development, the gaining of tools and education about the process of influencing and persuading others, is important when working with groups and teams in the work place. Recognition of one's personality preferences using self-assessment is a critical dimension of leadership development. This study examined the personality preferences of a cohort of prelicensure nursing students (N = 14) enrolled in an 18-month leadership program. Students completed the Myers-Briggs assessment before starting and at the completion of the program. Through active student-centered learning and experiential exercises, students became more aware of how they preferred to relate to others and how this might affect their work in groups and leading interprofessional teams. The most prominent personality type for both pre- and postassessment was extroversion, sensing, thinking, and judging.