Kings Fund and Centre for Creative Leadership 21 May 2014
- The Kings Fund and Centre for Collective Leadership have published two new papers which consider the impact of collective leadership on culture and compassionate care in the NHS, with guidance on delivering this in your organisation. They are supported by the 2014 leadership survey, which found that only 39 per cent of NHS staff felt their organisation could be characterised by openness, honesty and challenge.
- Collective leadership – as opposed to command-and-control structures – provides the optimum basis for caring cultures. Collective leadership entails distributing and allocating leadership power to wherever expertise, capability and motivation sit within organisations.
- This paper explains the interaction between collective leadership and cultures that value compassionate care, by drawing on wider literature and case studies of good organisational practice. It outlines the main characteristics of a collective leadership strategy and the process for developing this.
- Policy implications
- The process of developing a collective leadership strategy must begin with the board since the scale of the change process and resources required demand complete commitment from the most senior leaders.
- A collective leadership strategy focuses on the skills and behaviours that leaders will bring to shape the desired culture, including generic and specific behavioural competencies. It also designs systems for ensuring leaders act together.
- Collective leadership implies all staff welcoming feedback, treating complaints and errors as opportunities for system learning rather than as prompts for blame. This encourages collective openness to and learning from errors, near misses and incidents.
Delivering a collective leadership strategy for healthcare
- This paper explains the interaction between collective leadership and cultures that value compassionate care, by drawing on wider literature and case studies of good organisational practice. It outlines the main characteristics of a collective leadership strategy and the process for developing this.
- Policy implications
- The process of developing a collective leadership strategy must begin with the board since the scale of the change process and resources required demand complete commitment from the most senior leaders.
- A collective leadership strategy focuses on the skills and behaviours that leaders will bring to shape the desired culture, including generic and specific behavioural competencies. It also designs systems for ensuring leaders act together.
- Collective leadership implies all staff welcoming feedback, treating complaints and errors as opportunities for system learning rather than as prompts for blame. This encourages collective openness to and learning from errors, near misses and incidents.
