Learning from leading through a nightmare year

22 December 2025

It has become a custom to share my reflections annually - reflecting on the changing context, many leadership challenges and my own learning from each year. I’ve found it a cathartic way of closing my year before feeling able to step back for the one real break of the year. I hope my reflections provide some hope to those coming to the end of their own nightmare years.

It's been a tough year.

Two charities dear to my heart have closed their doors with me at their helm. Two very different sets of circumstances.

Staff College - the output of nine years of solid graft to build an organisation from scratch and establish it as a national provider of impactful leadership programmes for senior healthcare leaders. A heart-breaking call to make for any leader who has invested so much of their heart and soul in making an organisation a success.

Before I had even closed the door fully on Staff College, I had an SOS call from the Point of Care Foundation. I had served as a trustee for over four years and knew it was in an acutely difficult position. I knew that I would be stepping in to close it within a matter of months. And I knew that it would require leading a team through a painful change process which ended with the loss of everyone’s jobs.

I agreed out of a sense of duty. I hoped I might somehow manage to pull off a good end for the organisation. For the 200+ organisations we served, and the 45 individuals who had all invested years of their lives into our approaches to humanising healthcare. Despite feeling compelled to try and give it the best end possible, it still felt a pretty overwhelming challenge to take on!

So, what have I learnt through this last ‘nightmare year?’

1. Choosing how to respond

Early on, I made an intentional decision that I wouldn’t just rock back and forth, either pretending things weren’t as bad as they really were, or angrily looking for people to blame for the circumstances I found myself in. Sometimes it was easier said than done…

It was important to me to go out with my head held high. Knowing I’d done everything I could to close things well, to look after the people affected and to set them up for the future if possible. It has brought me some comfort through the grief and anguish of dismantling the things I’d spent so long working to build.

2. Deciding what matters

Deciding what mattered enabled me to choose where compromise was acceptable and where it would cause unrecoverable harm. There were plenty of other decisions I could have taken along the way. Ways to save an additional pound or two. But all would have consequences. Short term they were still unlikely to have seen us through the difficult financial challenges and long term they would have taken years to rebuild the trust and reputational impact.

In the same breath, remaining flexible to other ideas and open to what might be possible without getting too dogmatic.

3. Listening to understand – and acting on it

Taking time, even in the thick of it, to listen to others and understand what mattered to them was important. It enabled me to prioritise my own efforts and create space for others to mark their endings in ways that I might never have thought of. The Staff College book, ‘A View of Leadership,’ may never have come into being without doing so.

At the Point of Care Foundation, I spent my first fortnight listening to the legitimate concerns of colleagues about what might be lost in a transfer of our services to a new host. Their concerns and anxieties became the basis of our recommendations for how a new model to deliver our Schwartz Rounds training and mentor support could work in a new home. The model being taken forwards by the Schwartz Center for Compassionate Healthcare would never have looked the way it does now without drawing on that expertise from the practitioners living and breathing the facilitation of Schwartz Rounds.

4. Putting some damn effort in

It would be easier…I imagine…to decide that as an organisation is closing anyway, we could just coast through the last bits. To shift the focus to what’s next. To look after no 1. An understandable human reaction…but not one I would have tolerated in myself.

Closing organisations is difficult and risky work. Leading teams and organisations through complex transitions is not for the faint-hearted. And (in my view) it needs leaders who are brave enough to confront the difficulty of the situation. Who put the effort into finding a way through and bring people with them. To be honest and transparent about the uncertainties and difficult decisions being made. To provide clarity where it can be given. To care about the people affected and to create space for them to be part of the way through. And to communicate, communicate, communicate!

In a position that will sound odd to many, the Point of Care Foundation was due to close with some substantial reserves. Not enough to reliably give it a chance of continuing as an independent organisation in the context of 2025-26. But too much not to do something proactive with.

At a time when time, energy and bandwidth was wanting, I asked the Board of Trustees to grant me the opportunity to run a competitive bid process for our remaining funds. To seek proposals from the Point of Care’s community for good ideas that could contribute to humanising healthcare. The response was overwhelming. Eleven organisations and groups put their best thinking hats on to propose a broad spectrum of ideas. It was a real privilege to see four of them be funded in full. And a tangible example of what can happen with a bit of effort!

5. Creating the conditions for what’s next

For me, a crucial part of closing both organisations, has been a focus on what follows them. How the expertise and experience developed by both can continue to impact on good healthcare provision for the future.

An important part of the closure process for Staff College was democratising our intellectual property. Enabling our faculty of leadership development experts to continue to design and deliver Staff College-based leadership programmes as independent providers.

With the Point of Care Foundation, it was ensuring the smooth transition of one hundred and eighty three Schwartz Rounds contracts to the Schwartz Center for Compassionate Healthcare, who take on responsibility from the 1 January 2026. All of which will continue to be supported in the UK and ROI by Point of Care mentors and staff, hopefully long into the future.

Conclusion

I suppose my conclusion from all of my learning this year is that good things happen when you care and put some effort in.