Developing prospective managers. Part 2. The process

This article is the second in a series of three articles that describe a project set up to define, design, and try out tools for the selection and development of nurse managers. Through the Prospective Managers Pilot Project, Stanford University Hospital nurses have explored an alternative to the traditional approach of "working your way up the ladder" to management competence. Selected candidates, with less than 1 year of clinical experience, strove to learn and demonstrate 25 defined skills of a head nurse. The first article in the series addressed the experiential interview approach to selection of candidates. This article defines the competency expectations of the head nurse, methodology to attain these skills by the prospective manager, and the tools that the project coordinator and mentors used to measure the development of the prospective manager.