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I am the Interim Director of Leadership for the NHS Institute of Innovation & Improvement. The work of the Leadership Team includes support for existing senior leaders through board level development and coaching.  One of the projects I am involved in is The Enhancing Engagement in Medical Leadership project, and it is a jointly led by the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges (AoMRC) and the NHS Institute. As part of the project the team have developed the Medical Leadership Competency Framework and the Medical Engagement Scale.  What is the Medical Engagement Scale? Research has shown that medical engagement is one of the key factors influencing organisational performance. The Medical Engagement Scale (MES) offers NHS trusts a greater insight to the level of engagement of doctors in their organisation and ways in which this engagement might be improved. It is designed to assess medical engagement in management and leadership in NHS organisations, and to differentiate between the individual’s personal desire to be engaged and the organisation’s encouragement of involvement. How does it work? Has an initial pilot been introduced? If you liked to know answers to the above please submit your questions to me to find out more.

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Organisations need good leadership to set strategy, drive improvement, and bring the best out in their staff. I am a member of a small team working with NHS Boards across England. We work directly with Boards and senior leaders, as well commissioning support to meet their development needs, and developing specialist areas. I have worked with senior leaders and teams in the NHS, Local Authorities and the Police, and am fascinated by how they work, and how they might work better. In addition to our generic Board work, I am increasingly working with the leadership and improvement agencies for Local Government and the Police. The drive for public sector organisations and leaders to work closer together to improve services has significant implications for NHS Boards and leaders, particularly given sectors’ often different drivers, cultures and styles. The need to work across organisational boundaries to tackle really challenging problems – in a tough financial climate - will require much greater knowledge, breadth and trust than is sometimes the case. I am working with the other agencies to develop several programmes to help Boards and their members: NHS Board members will soon be able to participate in intensive reviews of Local Authorities so they benefit from NHS leaders’ experience, and NHS participants understand better how Councils work; we are developing a programme where senior NHS, Local Authority and Police leaders undertake intensive development together; and we are piloting joint national agency work in certain communities. So why are Boards important? What makes a Board an effective Board? Should NHS leaders work closer with other leaders?

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I entered Sussex Partnership at a really pivotal point in time. It was just acquiring Foundation Trust status, the organisation was undergoing a full restructure, its main service contract was being re-negotiated and the business objectives being mapped out were more ambitious than ever before. I have therefore spent the last 12 months fully immersed in an intensive round of business planning, service and process modelling and contract development work, whilst at the same time looking to establish strong commissioner relationships and introduce standardised approaches into the Trust to deliver robust change management. If you are keen to find out more about how a Mental Health Trust compares to other parts of the NHS (I can highly recommend it) and what things you could be asked to do in the more commercial / project management type roles, please let me know.

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I am proud of the NHS and this sense of pride is very objective as it is based on experience of multiple healthcare systems across the world. My eagerness to pursue leadership stems from the realisation that despite immense hard work by a large majority of the NHS workforce, the progress and quality of care is still far from perfect. This is, to a large extent, related to lack of leadership at various levels. Talent needs to be spotted and nurtured at all levels and mechanisms put in place such that the system empowers individual action and links the individual to the organisation as a whole. The limiting factor is not the lack of leadership talent but perhaps, the inadequacy of leadership talent recognition, nurturing and development. In the absence of the optimum soil, water and light many a leader has withered away. Clinical leadership is close to my heart. For a system to flourish it needs leaders at all levels and from all strands of the workforce. Leadership to me is a frame of mind, a state of thinking and being. If you think you are a leader, we can have a conversation!

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As a core member of the NHS National Leadership Council (NLC), I have a particular interest in creating a supportive environment for our leaders of the future. I am involved in the Emerging Leaders and Board Development work programmes within the council and I do strongly believe that the unprecedented economic and quality challenges of the next few years will require all NHS leaders to develop new skills that will enable us to manage the NHS through complex and financially difficult times. Credibility is a very important word for emerging leaders. As a new entrant onto the graduate scheme, with no prior experience of working in health care, it can be a very daunting time, and the need to establish credibility with your teams and peers is very important. Similarly on the Breaking Through Top Talent Programme, participants are working in placements at a much higher level of responsibility than they have previously enjoyed. Emerging Leaders at all levels have a requirement to equip themselves with credibility that will appeal equally to managers, clinicians, patients and staff. Much of the work that I am involved with for the NLC is looking to support emerging leaders in their aim to be credible leaders of the future, through mentoring, support networks, briefings on key issues, networking events, board exposure and more. I am particularly interested to hear from future emerging leaders on the kind of support structures that they think they require, and to answer questions on establishing yourself within the NHS and understanding how to equip yourselves for the future challenges that will come your way.

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In addition to managing three departments (Pathology, Haemophilia and Infection Control) I am intimately involved with a couple of significant projects. The project I am sharing with you now is examining how to modernise Pathology services to enable the department to respond effectively to the pressures being experienced by the sector on a regional and national basis to ensure its survival and prosperity". Pathology on a national level is expected to centralise it services in response to The Carter Report (2008) whereby we will see the demise of smaller hospital laboratories in the wake of larger regional ones. My role is to manage the modernisation and potentially the expansion of our current services, both in terms of laboratory capacity and seeking new customers, to ensure we are able to compete as the laboratory of choice in our region. This involves challenging established mind sets as to the way we do our business, identifying ways to improve our business by making it more effective and efficient as well as gaining buy-in from the Executive Board.