•Differentiate Essential Nursing Leadership Qualities.•Apply 3 areas of palliative leadership.•Create an action plan of next steps of leadership. Leadership within palliative nursing is not defined or grounded by level of nursing practice nor education but rather on qualities. Many organizations have focused time and resources to enhance leadership skills in their staff. These initiatives usually focus on dedicated nurse leadership positions, such as administrators, managers, directors, or executives. However, leadership extends beyond these roles such as clinical practice, policy/advocacy, research, education, public health, and metrics. Leadership in palliative care is characterized by leading others with a clear vision of palliative care initiatives, motivating and inspiring others to achieve excellence in care, positively relating to others to create healthy work environments, and changing the behavior of others to work collaboratively in palliative care (Speck 2006; Dahlin and Coyne, 2018; Dahlin, Coyne, Goldberg and Vaughn, 2018). Nurse leaders must focus on a broad view of nursing and the ability to respond to change proactively, rather than reactively, in anticipating the future landscape (Wolf, 2012). More specifically, the nurse leader must first assess their personal leadership capabilities prior to moving towards team development and competence. Through didactic, role play, and interactive media, this session will examine palliative nursing leadership, describe key leadership characteristics, explore leadership possibilities, and create an action plan to move into leadership.