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Outstanding leadership

The NHS is operating in a world which is changing at a scale and pace we have never seen.

We are serving a population with increasingly complex and enduring health needs and which is getting older. We are working in challenging financial circumstances and yet we, and our patients, quite rightly have high expectations of the NHS and the quality of our services, expectations the NHS does not always meet.

The NHS is changing too, with devolved and clinically-led decision making, new organisations and transformed ways of working.

There has been investment in leadership development for some time now, and our leaders have done a remarkable job over the last ten years. But the last decade was one which suited a certain style of leadership; which ensured targets were met and people were told what to do to meet them. While this worked at the time and served the NHS well, it won’t in the current context.

The challenges the NHS faces will not be addressed by ‘tweaking around the edges’. We need industrial levels of innovation and transformation – and it is outstanding leadership that will help deliver this change for us.

The NHS Leadership Academy will develop this outstanding leadership in health, in order to improve people’s health and their experience of services.

We will do it by developing a single, consistent and recognised approach for leadership development and talent management built on our Leadership Framework, which has been adopted by all professional groups.

The Self Assessment Tools on our website also allow individuals to assess and review their own leadership behaviours and competencies. Through this we will broaden the range of leadership behaviours people in the health system use. We’ll do this through building on existing work like the award-winning Management Training Scheme; the Top Leaders programme for our most senior teams and the Clinical Fellowships, which offer clinicians the opportunity to enhance their leadership skills through a structured programme of learning, alongside a service improvement project within their own organisations.

We will also deliver a set of career-matched, accredited programmes for clinicians and managers which will comprise one of the largest leadership development programmes in the world. The ultimate end will be to professionalise leadership, raising the profile, performance and impact of our leaders, requiring and supporting them to demonstrate their fit and proper readiness to carry out their leadership role.

All our work will focus on making leadership in the health system more inclusive, so our leadership reflects the communities we serve. There is significant evidence of how diverse teams benefit organisations and it’s vital that we use every opportunity to get this diversity reflected in our leadership community.

We are also working with existing and emerging organisations in our new operating environment to support the development of the kind of leaders the NHS needs now and in the future.

We have programmes to support the development of leaders in the emerging CCGs – including supporting the leadership assessment process as part of their authorisation. Our intention is to put leadership development at the heart of commissioning.

We are working with aspirant foundation trusts, delivering a programme to offer practical, confidential ‘critical friend’ support to trusts around their QIPP performance.

We are working closely with our colleagues in public health and social care to co-design and develop leadership programmes targeted at directors of public health, adult social services and children’s services that will create exceptional system leadership capability. In conjunction with the Skills Academy for Social Care we have developed a tailored form of the Leadership Framework.

And we’re working with and through local and regional colleagues.

The Academy’s vision is to be seen as a centre of excellence and beacon of good practice for leadership development and talent management. But we also realise that a significant amount of leadership development is done at an individual and organisational level. Over the coming months we will begin to work with local delivery partners, who know the local health systems so well, to make sure we have a consistent national approach, but one which is tailored to meet local needs.

There are huge challenges ahead for the health system. There are also huge opportunities to use outstanding leadership to secure its future.

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