Communication and Relationship Management
What you must know
Communication is the nurse manager's primary instrument: every staffing decision, safety concern, and performance issue travels through it. Know emotional intelligence (self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship management) - most items test your response, not the definition. Active listening (paraphrasing, reflecting, clarifying, withholding judgment) is the right answer far more often than advising or reassuring. Assertive communication - I-statements or DESC (Describe, Express, Specify, Consequences) - sits between passive and aggressive and is the expected style when escalating a concern up the chain.
Conflict and teams
Know the five conflict modes: competing, collaborating, compromising, avoiding, accommodating. Collaborating (high assertiveness/high cooperativeness) fits important issues where time exists and the relationship matters; compromising is a fast partial settlement; avoiding is legitimate for trivial issues or a cooling-off period; accommodating preserves harmony at your own expense. The classic trap is selecting collaborating for every vignette, or treating conflict as inherently dysfunctional - constructive conflict surfaces unsafe practice. Also know Tuckman's stages (forming, storming, norming, performing, adjourning): friction in a new team is storming, not failure. Use structured tools such as SBAR for handoffs and escalation.
Worked example / rule of thumb
A charge nurse and a surgeon clash over a case delay. Ask three questions: How important is the issue? How important is the relationship? How much time is there? High/high/moderate points to collaborating - open with "I want to understand what held you up and share what we can control," never with blame. When time is short and stakes are low, compromise or accommodate.