Abstract

Background: This is a critical reflection in relation to the nine months I spent on the Clinical Leadership Programme organised by a large NHS acute trust in England, underpinned by practice development methodology. The programme aimed to support 23 consultant clinicians from different medical specialties in their leadership development.

Aims: To develop insights into my personal development as a transformational leader from exploring the concepts and tools introduced in the programme in relation to my role as a clinical lead for anaesthetics services across the trust.

Conclusions: From my reflection, I now have a clear understanding of what leadership is, how it relates to management and that a good leader is often a good manager too. In addition, I have concluded that investing time in developing self-awareness in terms of my leadership behaviours has clarified my leadership role and also how to be a transformational leader in everyday practice. Additionally, using the headings person-centred care, safe care, effective care and effective workplace culture, I have been able to reflect and review some of my achievements as follows:

Person-centred care: I visited the home of a patient with learning difficulties to enable them to access the hospital from the community

Safe care: I have enabled a reduction in the number of ‘never’ events by promoting the stop before you block (SB4UB) programme in my anaesthesia department

Effective care: I facilitated the enrolment of major elective surgical patients into the Enhanced Recovery Programme

Effective workplace culture: I have zero tolerance to incidences of bullying and harassment

Implications for practice:

• Good leaders have the skills to develop with their teams shared priorities and purposes that guide everyday actions
• Good leaders and good managers are needed to enable teams of people to work together
• Successful leaders sometimes make changes that may be unpopular
• Anyone, regardless of position or discipline, can develop transformational leadership behaviours

See also Leading the health service into the future: transforming the NHS through transforming ourselves (IPDJ Vol 6. No. 2) by Mansoor Akhtar, James Norbert Casha, Julia Ronder, Mohamed Sakel, Catherine Wight and Kim Manley. This article explores the leadership programme which Kenneth Adedeji Adetokunbo Adegoke talks about here.

This article by Kenneth Adedeji Adetokunbo Adegoke is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 3.0 License.