Abstract
There is a trend in health systems around the world to place great emphasis on and faith in improving 'leadership'. Leadership has been defined in many ways and the elitist implications of traditional notions of leadership sit uncomfortably with modern healthcare organisations. The concept of distributed leadership incorporates inclusivity, collectiveness and collaboration, with the result that, to some extent, all staff, not just those in senior management roles, are viewed as leaders. Leadership development programmes are intended to equip individuals to improve leadership skills, but we know little about their effectiveness. Furthermore, the content of these programmes varies widely and the fact that many lack a sense of how they fit with individual or organisational goals raises questions about how they are intended to achieve their aims. It is important to avoid simplistic assumptions about the ability of improved leadership to solve complex problems. It is also important to evaluate leadership development programmes in ways that go beyond descriptive accounts.
Highlights
Surveying the health policy landscape in my own country and beyond, I am often reminded of HL Menken’s dictum that ‘there is always a solution to every human problem: neat, plausible and wrong’ (1)
Calls for more and better leadership abound (2), with leadership being viewed as the answer to various complex problems in healthcare settings
In the context of the English National Health Service (NHS), the Leadership Academy has recently celebrated its second anniversary. It is owned by the NHS and offers a range of programmes intended to broaden the range of leadership behaviours people use, as well as professionalising leadership, making leadership more inclusive and representative of the communities it serves and developing leaders who embrace and facilitate innovation
Summary
Surveying the health policy landscape in my own country and beyond, I am often reminded of HL Menken’s dictum that ‘there is always a solution to every human problem: neat, plausible and wrong’ (1). It is owned by the NHS and offers a range of programmes intended to broaden the range of leadership behaviours people use, as well as professionalising leadership, making leadership more inclusive and representative of the communities it serves and developing leaders who embrace and facilitate innovation. These claims contrast with a recent review which found that “ there are many publications stressing the importance of leadership....only a few studies provide observational evidence to support this view, and no studies have rigorously tested this proposition in health care” (4).
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