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The NHS long-term plan sets out a national vision for leadership that is both compassionate and diverse. This King's Fund live online event explored the evidence base and what practical and behavioural changes are required now and over the next ten years to achieve that cultural change.

Sustaining the NHS as a culture of high-quality compassionate care requires compassionate leadership at every level and in interactions between all parts of the system – from national leaders to local teams. Compassionate leadership in practice means leaders listening with fascination to those they lead, arriving at a shared (rather than imposed) understanding of the challenges they face, empathising with and caring for them, and then taking action to help or support them. This article discusses the myths that must be addressed to ensure people see the value of compassionate leadership. 

This article for Forbes looks at new data suggesting that for almost 70% of people, their manager has more impact on their mental health than their therapist or their doctor—and it’s equal to the impact of their partner. It outlines leadership approaches to improve employees' mental health, including self-management, impact recognition, fostering connection, offering choice and providing challenge.

Not all leaders achieve the desired results when they face situations that require a variety of decisions and responses. All too often, managers rely on common leadership approaches that work well in one set of circumstances but fall short in others. Why do these approaches fail even when logic indicates they should prevail? The answer lies in a fundamental assumption of organisational theory and practice: that a certain level of predictability and order exists in the world. This assumption, grounded in the Newtonian science that underlies scientific management, encourages simplifications that are useful in ordered circumstances. Circumstances change, however, and as they become more complex, the simplifications can fail. Good leadership is not a one-size-fits-all proposition as David J. Snowden and Mary E. Boone discuss in this article for the Harvard Business Review. They look at the 'Cynefin framework' which allows executives to see things from new viewpoints, assimilate complex concepts, and address real-world problems and opportunities.

Humility, transparency and urgency are the keys to successfully steering an organization – big or small – through the challenges that come your way. In this TED Talk, leadership expert, Amy Edmondson, provides clear advice and examples to help any leader rise to the occasion.

This Health Service Journal (HSJ) article explores how executive leaders can drive improvement by focusing on developing an organisational culture, building up staff in an open, just, and empowering environment, thereby enabling organisations to meet the challenges of the new and uncertain healthcare environment.

The pandemic has challenged managers as never before, but one powerful leadership strategy is being overlooked, say Boris Groysberg and Susan Seligson in this blog for the Harvard Business School. Be kind.

In Maintaining motivation in uncertain times the King’s Fund advises leaders how they can best support their teams by offering structure and containment, protecting, encouraging, and creating opportunities. 

Challenges to the status quo present leaders with the opportunity and responsibility to not only respond but to learn and transform the system. This article from Slotkin et al. shares the experience of leaders at a large health system to design an emerging COVID response to effectively innovate to sustain improvement.

This commentary from Michael Fraser shares recommendations for leaders to meet COVID-19 stressors successfully. The article suggests leaders communicate well, be decisive, lead without hierarchy, remain proactive and take care of themselves to protect others.

Access to wide range of perspectives can bring creativity to solutions and the actions that implement them. This website presents materials that cover topics such as leading in critical times, building and supporting resilience, Leading to Innovate, change and adapt, teaming and working remotely, coaching peers and developing as a leader.

This regularly updated resource collection links to webinars, articles, and conversations that explore the role of leadership in crisis response. Topics covered include workforce, telehealth, operations and safety.

This month’s Letter from America looks at actions and strategies core to leading an organisation during unexpected enterprise-affecting crises. Letter from America is the latest in a Patient Safety Learning blog series highlighting new accomplishments in patient safety from the United States. “There's no such thing as the unknown—only things temporarily hidden, temporarily not understood.” James T. Kirk, Captain, Starship Enterprise. Star Trek, Season 1: The Corbomite Maneuver. Leading a large enterprise isn’t easy. Vision, compassion, humility, curiosity and adaptability are required attributes for those in charge to keep moving forward during times of relative calm or uncertainty. The stress and tragedy that accompanies catastrophic events can reduce the resolve and effectiveness of even the most accomplished leaders. Unprecedented large-scale situations, such as the Hurricane Katrina landfall or the September 11th terrorist attacks, reveal gaps in understanding that may not have been apparent before the disaster. These blind spots can dismantle the reserve of a leader and their team to culminate in poor decisions, inaction and organisational dysfunction. The COVID-19 pandemic is such an event. Rules are being mindfully adjusted to respond to the litany of process, clinical, financial and political disruptions healthcare workers must grapple with as they face the uncertain conditions of their patients, communities and themselves. It is incumbent on leaders to create stability by addressing these unknowns. Leaders within hospitals, social care organisations and within the public health spectra need to make immediate process adjustments to optimise effort, realise opportunities for improvement and learn to be resilient. They need to arrive at understanding while simultaneously managing challenges that emerge from the strained system to keep their enterprise on track. They need to do this by paying attention to safety culture, transformation and innovation, and will need tools and resources to do so. Leadership must build a culture to keep patients and workers safe. Leader’s communications and actions are core to the implementation of safe working conditions to provide the best care possible during a crisis. Yet, a Gallup poll of US healthcare workers found a lack of understanding of their organisation’s COVID-19 plan and lack of belief that safety policies in place will support their safe return to work. To address this gap, experts recommend leaders three steps to a better safety culture: use formal and informal mechanisms to explicitly communicate what the organisation is doing to keep staff informed and safe during the pandemic enlist their managers to implement policies, create opportunities to align the work of management and hold managers accountable to implement and sustain current practice and procedure talk to their people. Keeping an open dialogue through the use of established mechanisms such as ‘rounding’ can solicit insights and raise concerns to enhance the safety of teams and patients. Leadership must see opportunities to transform systems: COVID-19 has presented leaders with immense responsibility to act, adjust quickly as required and use those process changes to improve the overall system of care post-pandemic in preparation for the next unprecedented challenge. Geisinger Health System leaders in their article, 'How one health system is transforming in response to Covid-19' share the experience of designing their emerging COVID response to reliably innovate rather than only react. Leaders examined core system business concerns such as pharmacy and information technology by bringing together multidisciplinary groups that dismantled silos. Teams worked together using scenario planning to fully consider how restoring care processes, entering new work phases, preparing for the second wave and restoring financial viability would affect patients and employees. Leadership must use evidence and collective knowledge to adapt: The Journal of Public Health and Management Practice shares recommendations for leaders to meet COVID-19 stressors successfully. The article suggests leaders communicate well, be decisive, lead without hierarchy, remain proactive and take care of themselves to protect others. For example, to lead across a system seek expertise from a variety of organisational and environmental elements. Working with government officials, staff and peers can form collaborations, solidify shared purpose and distribute responsibility to serve a community well in crisis. Public health is a core partner in understanding how to guide, motivate and inspire change to enhance a collective response to COVID-19 and upcoming health threats. Clinicians in patient-facing leadership roles also exhibit these behaviours as their roles shift to manage crisis. The perspective of a New York cardiologist leading a COVID-19 infections disease service illustrates how the transfer of tacit knowledge around deliberate leadership observed daily while coordinating the service shaped his views on leadership and his ability to lead. Being emotionally available was a core characteristic that helped to express grief, exhibit vulnerability and openly share concerns, giving the experience the humanness it needed. This was important not only in his ability to mature as a leader but to demonstrate the empathy needed to get his team through the challenges at hand. James T Kirk knew how to lead. He sought consensus, learned from mistakes, yet acted as necessary to keep his crew safe, engaged and aligned with the organisational mission. He sought partners across the federation as needed. Kirk could be firm, decisive, yet empathetic. Have health leaders done similarly to protect staff, patients and the community, while gaining experience during COVID-19 to apply over time to enrich the care system at large and boldly go to a better, safer future?

This podcast from the Kings Fund asks, what’s the scale of the challenge currently facing the NHS workforce? Helen McKenna talks to Prerana Issar about the NHS People Plan, her career journey and what inspired her to take up her role as Chief People Officer for the NHS.

What makes a great leader? In this TED talk, management theorist Simon Sinek suggests, it’s someone who makes their employees feel secure, who draws them into a circle of trust. But creating trust and safety, especially in an uneven economy, means taking on big responsibility.

Emma Plunkett, Consultant Anaesthetist and Adrian Plunkett, Paediatric Incentivist, talk about what inspired them to establish the Learning from Excellence approach to patient safety and care, how it has made an impact in the West Midlands and why it won a coveted HSJ Patient Safety Award.

The PRAISe project tests the hypothesis that, together, positive reporting and appreciative inquiry can be used as an intervention to facilitate behavioural change and improvement in the related areas of sepsis management and antimicrobial stewardship. This video gives a summary of the PRAISe project - a QI project about antibiotic stewardship, based on Learning from Excellence philosophy. Funded by the Health Foundation.