Deliberate Development

Charlie Brown, CEO The Staff College: Leadership in Healthcare

13 April 2023

A question has been occupying the shadow of my thoughts in recent weeks, ‘what makes people want to change?’

We meet many leaders through our programmes and most will have decided for themselves that the time is right for them to develop their leadership skills and practice further.  But there is an ever present mention of their ‘difficult’ colleagues.  Individuals lacking the awareness of their behaviours and the impact they have on others. Those that draw the energy from a department/are ‘stuck in their ways’/resistant to new ideas - I’ll leave a few lines here for you to add your own descriptors…

On the basis of Leo Tolstoy’s view that ‘Everyone thinks of changing the world but no one thinks about changing himself,’ I reflected on my own circuitous career and the many and varied moments that had encouraged me to consider that I might need to pay some attention to developing my own leadership practice further. 

I have always admired the ambition and drive of individuals who see a clear route ahead for their careers and manage them as such.  However…my own career started with a passionate interest to learn to be a luthier and has seen me step up to all sorts of leadership roles in different sectors since, but could hardly be described as a clear or well planned route!

Having started to think more deeply on this point, I felt I had to go back further and think first about the moments that had encouraged me to step up as a leader in the first place. What created the conditions for me to think it would be possible?

My evening reflections are:

• A deep frustration with the ‘way things are done around here’ and desire to make things less terrible.

• A strong sense of inescapable responsibility and duty to a cause.

• A deep loyalty to people I respect and/or felt responsibility for and a sense of importance in not ‘letting them down.’

• The stretch tests afforded to me by leaders who had more belief in me than I had in myself, and who gave me the opportunity to experiment and try.

• The support, patience and wisdom of my leaders when I pushed too hard and created the odd unintended disaster!

• The personal resilience to keep getting back up and persevering despite how difficult it sometimes seemed.

• An acceptance, in some circumstances, that I was the only person prepared to do it.

• And rooted in my own character, general stubbornness and persistence (feedback courtesy of long-suffering partner) along with passion and some modicum of intellect.

You may be thinking about your own personal list by now.

So, when I came back to my original question, ‘what makes people want to change?’ I reflected I had never specifically thought about wanting to change.  More that I had wanted to become a better leader for the reasons above and recognised there was some ‘work to do’. 

As I’ve got older, I have become more deliberate in focussing my efforts as a ‘work-in-progress’ through:

• Regular feedback from my own team and Board who provide encouragement and an ongoing source of areas for me to work on. 

• The importance of reflective time after those unintended disasters, and as part of a general routine, to recognise and take responsibility for my own actions, behaviour and decisions.

• Identifying opportunities to further test skills that come less naturally to me, and/or to stretch my own thinking and horizons.

• Taking my own development seriously and seeing it as part of my role as a leader.

I hope to leave with you a few thoughts to ponder for the day. For you, as a leader, how often do you make the time to reflect on why you’ve chosen to take on your leadership role(s)?  To think about what you’re hoping to achieve over a coming period?  And consider the elements of your practice you need to develop further and choose how to focus on doing so?

At Staff College we say regularly that a crucial part of a leaders’ role is to develop leaders.  So, my final thought to leave you with.  What opportunities can you be creating to stretch and encourage those you lead so that they too can pay more attention to developing their own leadership practice?

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The Staff College: Leadership in Healthcare Faculty Blogs are written as a free and open resource for anyone with an interest in leadership and leadership development. You can read the rest of the series here.