Core Skills for the Clinical Service Lead

Aimed at those in post or aspiring to the roles of clinical service lead or clinical director

It’s increasingly like a jungle out there and the effective service lead needs to know just how to approach leading services today. So many find themselves in the position of leadership by default, rather than by design and it’s a tough role if you don’t approach it the right way. Services today are more vulnerable than ever before and we operate in an era of increasing uncertainty. This significantly impacts motivation & morale and often creates paralysis and inertia at a time when services must adapt to ensure continued survival and success. The successful service lead not only knows what’s going on today and how this influences the service but also how to successfully lead the people and the service through these troubled times. That means having the right skills to unstick the service, devise strategy, foster consensus and create proactive attention to the absolute imperatives of the day. Approached with the right skills, models and methods, service leadership is immensely satisfying, leaving a significant positive legacy for those following.

This is the most comprehensive but compact service leads programme around. To ensure a highly practical, face-to-face programme, the course involves some preparation:

• Undertake the Service Leadership Audit, allowing you to identifying areas for improvement
• Review Service Competitiveness DVD, giving you a head start in a critical element of service evolution
• Complete Medicology Behavioural Drivers Questionnaire (MBDQ), helping you gain personal insight into your leadership approach
• Review Understanding People E-learning, allowing us to focus on the more practical elements of leading people

This programme attracts 19 CPD points, of which 7 are for pre-course work and 12 are for the attended sessions

• Understand the business of health and what this really means to service leads
• Ensure your service survives & thrives despite troubled times
• Gain insight into the Trust management mindset and how to work with it
• Foster responsibility and accountability in key staff
• Ensure a harmonious and productive work environment
• Drive forward change and reform with greater ease
• Resolve common challenges such as sickness & absence
• Restore positivity to an otherwise demotivated workforce

PRE-COURSE PREPARATION

• Undertake the Service Leadership Audit
• Review Service Competitiveness DVD
• Complete Medicology Behavioural Drivers Questionnaire (MBDQ)
• Review Understanding People E-learning

THE SERVICE CONTEXT TODAY

• Understanding the emerging service context & environment
• Critical insights in service funding, quality, safety & experience
• 10 Vital changes that all services must make to survive
• Approaching & improving service competitiveness
• Understanding the changing nature of service leadership
• The leadership challenge for today’s service leads
• The importance of the correct vision & how to determine it

ADAPTING THE SERVICE MODEL & ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURE

• The importance & use of an effective service model
• Avoiding the micromanagement trap – fostering self-governance
• Beyond clinical effectiveness – what does a service need to excel at?
• 6 Core Components of Clinical Business Excellence
• Adapting the model to your own service context
• Creating sufficient drive in each component
• Re-thinking how we organise services
• Devolving drive to a ‘champion’ structure
• The service lead as conductor

LEADING VERSUS MANAGING SERVICES

• Differentiating  leadership from management
• Understanding the consequences of a failure to lead
• Understanding and adopting a Transformational Leadership approach
• Fostering engagement to improve accountability and responsibility
• Applying the principles of Enablement – WILL, SKILL, CAPACITY & AUTHORITY
• Overcoming an era of learned helplessness
• NHS Leadership Framework – understanding it & utilising its principles
• 6 Core Components of Effective Leadership – an application model

CORE PRINCIPLES OF STRATEGIC SERVICE LEADERSHIP

• Ensuring that a successful strategic cycle happens
• The principles and practise of broad scanning
• Evaluating your changing environment using PESTEL analysis
• Identifying risks, threats and opportunities
• Determining commissioning and competitive risk
• Evaluating your analyses utilising SWOT
• Devising an effective vision & strategic plan
• Ensuring consensus and commitment
• Cascading vision & plans to ensure understanding & action

APPLYING LEADERSHIP - LEADING PEOPLE

• Leading versus managing people
• What do people need from their leader?
• Inspiring trust & confidence in your tribe
• Effective leadership communication that delivers results
• Providing leadership direction – practical vision & goals
• Fostering effective followship & collaboration
• Working effectively with Trust management
• Improving the tribe’s influence within the Trust
• Leadership integration – ensuring a high performance team
• Emotionally intelligent leadership
• Accessing hearts and minds
• Core principles in delivering on motivation & morale
• Diagnosing morale issues and how to improve them

APPLYING LEADERSHIP - LEADING IMPROVEMENT

• Aligning the people with the organisation
• Overcoming collaboration blocks & reaching consensus
• Examining & improving overall service performance
• Improving performance through standards and values
• Leading cost improvement & workforce re-design
• Instilling a cyclical approach to clinical and non-clinical optimisation
• Ensuring successful projects – the art of getting stuff done
• Avoiding common project pitfalls
• Overcoming change inertia & resistance
• Creating enthusiasm, drive and commitment

An action packed 2 days of practical strategies, discussions, cases and presentations

These are other courses that provide a good companion to this course.

• Core Skills in Strategic Effectiveness for Service Leaders