Journal of Research Development in Nursing and Midwifery

en Self-observer agreement in leadership practices of nursing supervisors: A comparison of supervisor and team member ratings Management and Health System Original Article <div style="text-align: justify;">Background: Leadership practices among nursing supervisors are essential to effective teamwork in hospital settings. However, supervisors’ self-ratings may differ from team members’ perceptions. Evidence of such discrepancies in nursing contexts remains limited, and understanding them may help improve leadership evaluation and guide targeted professional development. Therefore, this study aimed to compare nursing supervisors’ self-rated leadership practices with team members’ observer ratings and to assess the agreement between these two assessments. Methods: This cross-sectional analytical study was conducted from February to March 2025 among nursing supervisors in 43 public and private hospitals of Khorasan Razavi Province, Iran. All eligible supervisors (n = 60) were included through census sampling, and 3-4 team members per supervisor (n = 201) were selected by simple random sampling. Data were collected using the Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI) self and observer versions. Mean team-member ratings were calculated for each supervisor. Paired-samples t-tests and Bland-Altman analysis were used to compare ratings and assess agreement. Data were analyzed using STATA version 19.5. The significance level was set at p < 0.05. Results: Most participants in both groups were female. Nursing supervisors assigned higher scores to their leadership practices than did their team members across all leadership dimensions and the total LPI score (All p < 0.001). The mean (SD) total score was 82.22 (12.25) for self-ratings versus 68.66 (14.57) for observer ratings. Bland–Altman analysis indicated a systematic positive bias (Mean difference = 13.56, CI 95%: 8.56 to 18.56; LoA 95%: -24.39 to 51.51). Repeated-measures ANOVA revealed significant within-group differences across dimensions for both self-ratings (p < 0.001) and observer ratings (p < 0.001), with “Enabling Others to Act” scoring highest and “Inspiring a Shared Vision” scoring lowest in both groups. Conclusion: Nursing supervisors consistently rated their leadership practices higher than team members. This suggests that self-ratings alone may not adequately characterize leadership practices. Therefore, these findings suggest that healthcare organizations implement self-observer assessments to bridge the perception gap between supervisors and team members, thereby facilitating more targeted and effective leadership development interventions.</div> Leadership, Nurse Administrators, Professional Competence, Interprofessional Relations, Nursing 0 0 http://nmj.goums.ac.ir/browse.php?a_code=A-10-2272-2&slc_lang=en&sid=1 Najmeh Mohammadi mohammadin6@mums.ac.ir 0009-0005-0613-2420 No Student Research Committee, faculty of Nursing and Midwifery, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran Mohammad Amin Karimi its.aminkarimi@gmail.com 0009-0003-8334-4633 No Student Research Committee, faculty of Nursing and Midwifery, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran Akram Rabbani Javadi rabbaniJA1@mums.ac.ir 0000-0002-4706-1500 No Staff Education Supervisor, Dr. Sheikh Hospital, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran Fatemeh Heshmati Nabavi heshmatinf@mums.ac.ir 0000-0002-9842-966X Yes Nursing and Midwifery Care Research Center, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran