Objectives: to identify the knowledge of nursing professionals about leadership models and evaluate the authentic leadership profile among them.
Methods: analytical study, conducted between August and December 2015, involving 84 nursing professionals working in a public and tertiary hospital. We used two instruments: Sociodemographic Questionnaire with questions about leadership and the Authentic Leadership Questionnaire.
Results: both nurses and nursing technicians were unaware of authentic leadership. Both pointed to communication, planning, and organization as competencies of the leader (n = 58, 95%). Regarding the authentic leadership profile, we observed that the score was "high" among nurses and "low" among technicians. Holding a leadership position and professionally upgrading has positively influenced the highest-profile of authentic leadership.
Conclusions: nurses demonstrated to know behavioral leadership, while nursing technicians showed knowledge about situational leadership. Nurses had a high score of authentic leadership behaviors, while nursing technicians had a low score, but we found no significant difference between them. Holding a leadership position and professionally upgrading has positively influenced the highest profile of authentic leadership.