How to be a more compassionate and inclusive leader

Entitled ‘Our Leadership Way’, the NHS Leadership Academy has set out the key principles behind inclusive and compassionate behaviour as a leader towards individuals and colleagues

CREDIT: This is an edited version of an article that originally appeared on NHS Leadership Academy

Every day NHS people do amazing things in difficult circumstances. The best leaders promote the health and wellbeing of those around them and inspire all of us to do the best we can for our patients and service users. We should all experience and demonstrate consistently healthy leadership behaviours.

Complementing the NHS People Promise, Our Leadership Way formalises the approach our NHS leaders should take. Our Leadership Way sets out the compassionate and inclusive behaviours that leaders at all levels should show towards individuals and colleagues. 

It introduces how leaders at every level across the NHS can help raise the standards of leadership by committing to compassionate and inclusive leadership, supported by a culture of lifelong learning and development. 

It describes how to operate at your best and is a tool for leaders to use to consider how their behaviour impacts on the cultures they create.

The Heart, Head and Hands of Leadership

Heart

We are compassionate:

• We are inclusive, promote equality and diversity and challenge discrimination
• We celebrate diversity and respect everyone’s experience
• We lead by example, enabling the voices of those affected by discrimination to be heard
• We speak up when we see behaviours that aren’t inclusive or don’t promote diversity and equality

We are kind and treat people with compassion, courtesy and respect:

• We treat everyone as they would wish to be treated, whoever they are and whatever they do
• We never underestimate the physical and emotional impact that work in the NHS can have and offer support to those who need it
• We don’t forget the little things like saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’
• We create psychologically safe environments that enable open, honest, and fearless conversations

Head

We are curious:

• We aim for the highest standards and seek to continually improve harnessing our ingenuity
• We constantly aim to deliver high-quality care and experiences to patients, service users and staff.
• We are not afraid to try new things. We encourage creative thinking and champion the innovation that leads to continuous improvement and new solutions.
• We empower our staff to make improvements to the way care is delivered and the way services are run

We can be trusted to do what we promise:

• We aim always to deliver what we promise. We acknowledge when we cannot and communicate what we will do in a clear, engaging and transparent way
• We are visible as leaders. We engage with staff and listen to each other, our patients and service users
• We communicate clearly to prevent misunderstanding, taking time to check that people know what is being asked of them, as well as appreciating what they ask of us
• We acknowledge when things have gone wrong and act in a way that creates a fair and just culture

Hands

We are collaborative:

• We collaborate, forming effective partnerships to achieve our common goals
• We all act and behave in ways that promote collaboration
• We foster strong teamwork and take care to understand what matters to patients, service users and staff
• We are clear on our responsibilities and contributions and make the best use of the expertise we and our partners bring
• We are optimistic and ambitious and are not afraid to step out of our comfort zone when working with others

We take time to celebrate successes and achievements:

• We acknowledge the effort and contribution of the people we work with
• We help people to achieve their goals and work with them to identify opportunities for development where it is needed
• We proactively address identified disparities in recruitment and progression

10 ways in which Our Leadership Way can be used:

• Publicise these principles to encourage the right leadership behaviours in your organisation or system
• Review any existing ‘leadership standards’ documents in use in your organisation or ICS against Our Leadership Way
• Where organisations don’t have a framework in place, develop a local Leadership Way document, using this document as a guide
• Re-engage with staff at all levels to understand what Our Leadership Way means for them
• Consider using the six core principles as headings in job descriptions and assessing/ shortlisting candidates to judge how well their experience and commitment match these areas
• When interviewing for senior leader roles, consider basing questions on these principles and behaviours
• Build these principles and behaviours into appraisal conversations to understand how well leaders are doing in these areas and how they can do better
• Organise your leadership development activities and interventions around these principles and behaviours, to help leaders learn more about what these model behaviours entail
• Use these principles to review how meetings have gone. Ask yourself whether all participants demonstrated the desired behaviours
• ‘Call it out’ – when leaders behave in ways that are inconsistent with these principles, bring this to their attention. This can be difficult, but we are all on a journey to improve the leadership behaviours and culture in the NHS

Our Leadership Way does not add layers of regulation or oversight, but NHS England, acting on behalf of the wider system will look at existing information collection methods such as the NHS Staff Survey, Well-Led Reviews, Workforce Race Equality Standard (WRES) and Workforce Disability Equality Standard (WDES) data to assess how well leaders are adopting the behaviours we all need to see.