With all of the challenges that the NHS is going to face over the next few years, strong leadership skills are undoubtedly the key to ensuring that it meets its objectives. But what are those skills in an ever changing environment and does the NHS have enough of them?
leadership skills for the most part are lacking across a number of health sector organisations
According to the Department of Health, organisations need to embrace the concept of leadership. This includes:
- leadership from the top;
- empowerment of staff;
- team work;
- prevention, rather than correction of adverse outcomes;
- analysing, simplifying and improving processes;
- commitment to encouraging clinicians into management;
- ensuring greater involvement of women and people from ethnic minority backgrounds in management; and
- a strong patient focus.
Add to this the ability to manage people through significant change and control costs, makes it no easy task.
We spoke to a number of our customers to ask what leadership skills are in abundance and whether there is room for improvement. Overwhelmingly the results showed that leadership skills for the most part are lacking across a number of health sector organisations, particularly now when they are needed more than ever.
Employers could think about bringing in additional support on a temporary basis, with a specific remit to transfer their knowledge and know how to those in situ, so skills and experience aren’t lost.
