The Changing NHS

If Foundation Trusts are to thrive then they need to be capable of building and sustaining a culture where clinicians and managers are confident, ambitious, competent and action-orientated. One aspect of this challenge is the extent to which Trusts can excel at spotting and nurturing potential future leaders from within their own ranks.

If a NHS hospital Trust employs, say, 4000 staff, then surely at least 100 future leaders are there somewhere? After all, that’s just 2.5% of current staff.

Does your Trust do this and if it does, do the Trust Chief Executive and the HR Director meet regularly to review how people in the ´group of 100´ are doing?, to plan what opportunities to offer people next? and to identify succession paths? 

If your Trust does invest in growing its’ own future leadership, what criteria is used to identify people? Perhaps your organisation uses the Leadership Qualities Framework, promoted by the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement?

Skip from Be Excellent™ has posted a list of eleven criteria for spotting future leaders, drawn from Ram Charan’s book: Know-How: The Eight Skills that Separate People Who Perform From Those Who Don’t

1. They consistently deliver ambitious results.
2. They continuously demonstrate personal growth, adaptability, and learning better and faster than their peers .
3. They seize the opportunity for challenging, bigger assignments, thereby expanding capability and capacity and improving judgment.
4. They have the ability to think through the business and take leaps of imagination to grow the business.
5. They are driven to take things to the next level.
6. Their powers of observation are very acute, forming judgments of people by focusing on their decisions, behaviors, and actions, rather than relying on initial reactions and gut instincts; they can mentally detect and construct the “DNA” of a person.
7. They come to the point succinctly, are clear thinkers, and have the courage to state a point-of-view even though listeners may react adversely.
8. They ask incisive questions that open minds and incite the imagination.
9. They perceptively judge their own direct reports, have the courage to give them honest feedback so the direct reports grow; they dig into cause and effect if a direct report is failing.
10. They know the non-negotiable criteria of the job of their direct reports and match the job with the person; or if there is a mismatch they deal with it promptly.
11. They are able to spot talent and see the “God’s gift” of other individuals.

Personally I think a list of eleven criteria is too many to ‘operationalise´ successfully. Instead I would focus on the five criteria that I’ve put in bold font. Also I’d add a sixth, along the lines of:

• They consistently demonstrate a strong sense of wanting to serve others, especially patients.

What do you think to this list? Does your Trust have a way of identifying and nurturing potential future leaders? Does it draw equally from clinical and managerial ‘gene’ pools?

Thanks to George Ambler at The Practice of Leadership for drawing my attention to this issue.

Steve

nhs

leadership