Providing bespoke board development to Wirral Community Health and Care NHS Foundation Trust
Alison Hughes, Director of Corporate Affairs and Senior Information Risk Owner
Claus Madsen, Chief People Officer
IntroDUCTION Wirral Community Health and Care NHS Foundation Trust (WCHC) provides community health care services across the Wirral in the North West of England. Aims Despite the Trust performing well against CQC guidance with a good rating, WCHC’s board continues to be committed to challenging themselves on their journey towards excellence. Initial discussions between the Trust and the NHS North West Leadership Academy, centred around previous successful examples of board development and the need for an intervention that was creative, experimental and tailored to the needs of the Trust. One area of interest for the board was developing their communications approach with key stakeholders; focusing on how to ensure their messages resonated and appealed to target audiences.
Approach Initial discussions took place between the Trust’s board and the NHS North West Leadership Academy to produce a development plan for the board which would include improving communications through a storytelling approach. Over the course of 6 months, the NHS North West Leadership Academy team worked with WCHC, to help shape the requirements of this board development project. It was agreed that the scope of the project needed to be more innovative than traditional offers, as the board were open to testing their comfort levels by taking a more stretching and brave approach which would include being comfortable with being uncomfortable.
Outputs The NHS North West Leadership Academy is connected to a large network of highly experienced senior and executive level providers who specialise in developing aspects of leadership ranging from system change to equity, diversity and inclusion. The commissioning of expert knowledge was integral to the design and successful delivery of this project. The combined experience and skills of the development providers allowed them to develop a model for how senior leadership can “create good gossip”. “Creating good gossip” revolves around equipping a group to tell their own stories and by extension good stories and link these to the values, vision and aspirations of the organisation. The expertise of the development providers was combined to create two half-day board workshops that explored what the board wanted to achieve, and how they could communicate their actions and aspirations across the organisation.
Impact In addition to the qualitative feedback given by the WCHC board about their personal experience in the board development and their perception of its value, they have also explained how it fits into their wider ongoing organisational development work and future ambitions. Alison Hughes “We saw the impact of storytelling this last week in one of our Leadership Forums. Claus and his People team have created these innovative leadership forums as part of our staff engagement plans, which are twice-yearly touch points for our senior leaders (Senior Leadership Forum) and for all line managers at all bands up to band 7 (Leadership Forum), both of which are tools for evolving and embedding culture change and continuous improvement. So, when you have a fantastic tool like those and combine them with all the great learning from our board development you get some great potential for organisational development. Claus and I were floating around the various workshops at the last leadership forums and compassionate leadership, high-performing teams and being your authentic self were a real focus for our leaders and we heard so many people were talking about the value of communication in leadership.”
Feedback from the WCHC board has been overwhelmingly positive:
Claus Madsen “This board development has very much been the icing on the cake for what has been a great journey in improving our organisation. We are hoping to see further improved results on our next staff survey, and that this will add to other great developments and position us as an Outstanding organisation in our next CQC inspection.”
Alison Hughes “Day 1 was very much about ‘self’, understanding our own stories, our self- worth and our successes. Ben, who is an actor by background, had us framing these stories as if we were actors in a stage production. This was very freeing for us, and I think it allowed us to get to know one another in a new dimension. I think the success of day 1 is owed in some part to the strong relationships we have in our board; that psychological safety was key to the session’s success. On day 2 we explored corporate and organisational storytelling, and taking the learning from day 1, we used this really interesting concept of ‘good gossip’ and the idea of bringing a personal or people-focused element to stories to amplify their impact. Claus Madsen “The work we have done on the power of telling stories is very useful to us. We are already telling stories as an organisation and as individuals all the time and this session gave us a helpful framework to reshape what and how we share messages in the future to bring across more of the human aspects to the work we do. This approach helps make our messages much more authentic stand out from the rest and be meaningful. In a world where we are all bombarded with messages all of the time making them relevant, meaningful and authentic is very important. The feedback from the rest of the board is that this was very worthwhile for us.”
next steps WCHC’s board will continue their
development into a 2nd phase focusing on tackling the board’s equity diversity and inclusion aims. After these 2 phases are completed, the NHS North West Leadership Academy and Wirral Community Health and Care NHS Foundation Trust will regroup to review the next phase for development, continuing the theme of stretching and challenging towards excellence. For more information about opportunities for bespoke board development with the North West Leadership Academy contact: nwla.execleadership@nhs.net
Outcomes Senior leadership development naturally involves the exploration of complex challenges that an organisation is facing. Significant efforts were made to ensure the two workshops were safe and comfortable space for all participants.
nw.leadershipacademy.nhs.uk | Leader
Leader | nw.leadershipacademy.nhs.uk
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