A Phenomenological Study: Leading the Next Generation of Executive Nurse Leaders Using Biblical Principles

Understanding retirement requires getting inside people’s stories, and qualitative research is well-suited to address retirees' more profound lived experiences (Amabile, 2019). This qualitative study uses a phenomenological transcendental method to describe the retired nurse executive's leadership development competency and experiences mentoring emerging nurse leaders using biblical principles such as compassion, caring, serving, and spirituality. For this study, retired executive nurse leaders are defined as those who have served in an acute care hospital's formal executive leadership position and retired less than ten years ago. Leadership development competency is defined as a composite of top leadership principles, biblical principles, mentoring experiences, essential values, and abilities required to develop a particular workplace behavior and effective performance in leadership (Kragt & Day, 2020). The theory guiding this study is the Social Exchange Theory, which seeks to explain the relationship between mentors and mentees. Participants in the study emphasized an overwhelming desire to continue serving as a mentor during retirement. The study revealed a composite of leadership concepts that may be used to construct a conceptual model for retired nurse executives to mentor emerging leaders. Healthcare organizations and academic centers may integrate the composite of leadership concepts with the retired executive nurses to design and develop future mentoring models.