A Review of Leadership in the NHS

Professor Richard Bohmer, International Visiting Fellow, conducted interviews with three prominent leaders in this area, Professor Chris Ham, Sir Robert Naylor and Paul Zollinger-Read to better understand the history and challenges of medical leadership and engagement.

Watch the three short videos on medical leadership

Following last year’s successful Commission on Leadership and Management in the NHS, including the publication of the report The future of leadership and management in the NHS: No more heroes and our first annual NHS Leadership and Management Summit with the Secretary of State, we are instigating a further review on the theme of leadership for engagement.

Last year the commission’s report concluded that the challenges facing the NHS require leaders to engage with staff and those outside their organisation in different ways. A distributed leadership approach is needed – one that moves away from the concept of the superhero chief executive toward leadership which is demonstrated at all levels and across organisational boundaries.

In 2012, we will use our review to examine the concept of leadership for engagement in health care. 

The new work will encompass engagement and relationship-building across a range of dimensions within the NHS including leaders engaging staff, the public and patients; and NHS leaders engaging partner organisations in developing leadership across systems of care in order to:

• understand/clarify the value of engaging leadership in the NHS
• provide case studies and recommendations to support the further development of leadership for engagement in the NHS.

As last year, we have commissioned a series of papers by leadership and policy experts. These will focus on the role of leaders in the following areas:

• engaging doctors in improving services (Richard Bohmer)
• engaging emerging medical leaders (Pippa Bagnall)
• engaging patients and the public (Angela Coulter)
• engaging partner organisations across systems of care (Cass Business School)
• engaging staff in improving performance (Michael West and Jeremy Dawson)
• medical engagement (John Clark)
• boards and engagement (Real World Group)

This work will be supplemented with an expert lecture series in early 2012 and the final report will be launched at our second annual NHS Leadership and Management Summit on 23 May 2012.

For more information on the review, leadership lectures or summit please contact leadershipreview@kingsfund.org.uk