NSG 6620 Week 8 leadership communication discussion
Describe the key attributes of successful communication and relationship management, the nurse leader's role in improving communication, two challenges you face communicating during conflict, the strategies you would use to terminate an employee who violated policy, and how emotion compromises communication.
Editorial process
Last reviewed · August 14, 2026
Five questions, one of them uncomfortable
Five questions and they are not equally weighted in practice, because four can be answered from the reading and one cannot. Start with the attributes, but resist the list of adjectives. Successful communication and relationship management in a leadership context has identifiable features: it is timely rather than delayed until a review, it is specific enough to be acted on, it is two-way so the receiver can correct the sender, it is consistent between what is said publicly and privately, and it carries the same message up the hierarchy as down it. Then the leader's role in improving communication to enhance professionalism is about modelling and structure rather than exhortation. Leaders set what gets discussed in handover, whether a junior nurse can question a decision without cost, and whether difficult conversations happen at all or accumulate until somebody leaves. The two questions in between are where the reading pays off.
The termination question is the one that separates posts, and it is asking about process as much as tone. A defensible answer follows the organisation's progressive discipline policy, relies on documentation gathered before the meeting rather than recollection, involves human resources, states the policy violated and the evidence for it plainly, holds the meeting privately with a witness present, and keeps the conversation about conduct rather than character. It also acknowledges what you cannot say afterwards, because confidentiality survives the employment. The final question about emotion follows naturally: emotion is not the same as caring, and a leader who is visibly angry in a conflict conversation transfers the problem from the issue to themselves. Two challenges you personally face during conflict should be genuine — avoiding the conversation until it is overdue, or conceding to end the discomfort — because a generic answer here reads as evasion of the only reflective question asked.
Likely learning objectives
Inferred from the brief — check these against your own rubric.
- 01Identify the observable attributes of effective leadership communication.
- 02Explain how a leader's structural choices shape professional communication.
- 03Recognise personal patterns that impair communication during conflict.
- 04Describe a defensible process for terminating an employee for policy violation.
- 05Distinguish emotional presence from emotional reactivity in difficult conversations.
Read the full question
Review every instruction before using the planning guidance that follows.
Course-wide instructions that accompany this question
ADDITIONAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE CLASS Discussion Questions (DQ) Initial responses to the DQ should address all components of the questions asked, include a minimum of one scholarly source, and be at least 250 words. Successful responses are substantive (i.e., add something new to the discussion, engage others in the discussion, well-developed idea) and include at least one scholarly source. One or two sentence responses, simple statements of agreement or “good post,” and responses that are off-topic will not count as substantive. Substantive responses should be at least 150 words. I encourage you to incorporate the readings from the week (as applicable) into your responses. Weekly Participation Your initial responses to the mandatory DQ do not count toward participation and are graded separately. In addition to the DQ responses, you must post at least one reply to peers (or me) on three separate days, for a total of three replies. Participation posts do not require a scholarly source/citation (unless you cite someone else’s work). Part of your weekly participation includes viewing the weekly announcement and attesting to watching it in the comments. These announcements are made to ensure you understand everything that is due during the week. APA Format and Writing Quality Familiarize yourself with APA format and practice using it correctly. It is used for most writing assignments for your degree. Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for APA paper templates, citation examples, tips, etc. Points will be deducted for poor use of APA format or absence of APA format (if required). Cite all sources of information! When in doubt, cite the source. Paraphrasing also requires a citation. I highly recommend using the APA Publication Manual, 6th edition. Use of Direct Quotes I discourage overutilization of direct quotes in DQs and assignments at the Masters’ level and deduct points accordingly. As Masters’ level students, it is important that you be able to critically analyze and interpret information from journal articles and other resources. Simply restating someone else’s words does not demonstrate an understanding of the content or critical analysis of the content. It is best to paraphrase content and cite your source. LopesWrite Policy For assignments that need to be submitted to LopesWrite, please be sure you have received your report and Similarity Index (SI) percentage BEFORE you do a “final submit” to me. Once you have received your report, please review it. This report will show you grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors that can easily be fixed. Take the extra few minutes to review instead of getting counted off for these mistakes. Review your similarities. Did you forget to cite something? Did you not paraphrase well enough? Is your paper made up of someone else’s thoughts more than your own? Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for tips on improving your paper and SI score. Late Policy The university’s policy on late assignments is 10% penalty PER DAY LATE. This also applies to late DQ replies. Please communicate with me if you anticipate having to submit an assignment late. I am happy to be flexible, with advance notice. We may be able to work out an extension based on extenuating circumstances. If you do not communicate with me before submitting an assignment late, the GCU late policy will be in effect. I do not accept assignments that are two or more weeks late unless we have worked out an extension. As per policy, no assignments are accepted after the last day of class. Any assignment submitted after midnight on the last day of class will not be accepted for grading. Communication Communication is so very important. There are multiple ways to communicate with me: Questions to Instructor Forum: This is a great place to ask course content or assignment questions. If you have a question, there is a good chance one of your peers does as well. This is a public forum for the class. Individual Forum: This is a private forum to ask me questions or send me messages. This will be checked at least once every 24 hours.
Turn the brief into deliverables
- 01The key attributes of successful communication and relationship management.
- 02The nurse leader's role in improving communication and professionalism.
- 03Two personal challenges you face communicating during conflict.
- 04A termination process, including documentation, witnesses and human resources.
- 05An account of how emotion compromises communication in conflict.
- 06Responses to at least two peer postings.
Attributes, role, conflict, termination, emotion
Attributes that can be observed
Set out timeliness, specificity, two-way flow and consistency.
What the leader controls
Explain structural levers: handover, escalation norms, feedback cadence.
Two challenges of your own
Name two genuine difficulties you meet during conflict.
Terminating for a policy violation
Lay out the process from documentation to the meeting itself.
Emotion and its costs
Explain how reactivity moves attention from the issue to the leader.
Where leadership communication is actually studied
Recommended databases
- StatPearls via NCBI Bookshelf
- American Nurses Association
- AHRQ Patient Safety Network
- CINAHL
- Your organisation's progressive discipline policy
Search sequence
- 1.Read a current account of conflict management styles in health care.
- 2.Find evidence linking communication climate to reporting and professionalism.
- 3.Read your own employer's progressive discipline policy before writing that section.
- 4.Search for what is known about psychological safety and speaking up.
- 5.Draft the two personal challenges first, since they resist being filled in later.
Reference shortlist
These are authoritative starting points, not a ready-made bibliography. A qualified reviewer must confirm that each source fits the assignment and supports the claim beside which it is cited.
Nothing here is cleared for citation until you have read it.
- 01
Conflict Management in Healthcare
StatPearls, NCBI Bookshelf · 2023
Named conflict styles and what each achieves, for the challenges and termination sections.
- 02
Therapeutic Communication
StatPearls, NCBI Bookshelf · 2023
Communication techniques and barriers that translate directly into leadership practice.
- 03
Culture of Safety
AHRQ Patient Safety Network · 2024
Evidence on whether staff will raise concerns, which is what the leader's role produces.
- 04
Official Position Statements
American Nurses Association · 2024
Professional standards on incivility and workplace conduct that frame a termination.
Review before submission
Common mistakes
- Listing adjectives such as honest and open instead of naming observable attributes.
- Describing the termination as a conversation without any reference to policy or documentation.
- Giving generic challenges during conflict, which is the only reflective question asked.
- Confusing emotional presence with emotional reactivity and condemning both.
- Answering four questions and treating the fifth as a closing sentence.
- Skipping the peer responses, which are separately assessed here.
Submission checklist
- All five questions are answered in full.
- The attributes named are observable, not personality traits.
- The two conflict challenges are personal and specific.
- The termination process names documentation, human resources and a private setting.
- The emotion answer distinguishes caring from reactivity.
- Two peer responses are posted and each adds something.
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Written by
Aaron Bishop
MA, Education
assignment interpretation and research-methods coaching across disciplines
Aaron leads the EssayCrackers editorial desk. He works on how assignment briefs are read — what a rubric is actually asking for, and where students most often answer a different question than the one set.

Reviewed by
Dr. Nathan Cole
PhD, Rhetoric & Composition
Argumentation and thesis development
Nathan teaches first-year composition and directs a university writing center. He reviews EssayCrackers guides for argumentative soundness and citation accuracy.