Increasing leadership acumen: adopting a sense-making framework

Abstract

Health care environments, as complex adaptive systems, are constantly in flux. Nurse leaders cannot and in fact should not utilize approaches that worked in the past to attempt to navigate “wicked problems,” such as COVID-19. Clarity around the relationships among variables influencing the sociopolitical context is vital to understand. The adoption of a sense-making model, such as the Cynefin framework, fosters multiple perspectives, collaborative teamwork, and systems thinking to mitigate wicked problems. The importance of transformational leadership and followership is fundamental to tackling the lack of predictability the current pandemic has caused.