A doctor’s guide to everyday leadership

Doctors’ leadership 

Mentoring

A mentor will give objective advice, as well as have an honest conversation with you about the challenges of leadership development. Mentors can also act as a coach, and hold discussions to work out solutions to problems you identify at work.

This is in line with paragraph 12 of Good medical practice.

You can find mentors inside or outside your own specialty or organisation. Identifying your own mentor can lead to a more authentic working relationship.

There are also BMA resources on mentoring which you may find useful. Their resource includes further information on: 

• Understanding the culture and structure of an organisation.
• Developing skills and knowledge.
• Creating supportive environments in which successes and failures can be evaluated.

Shadowing

Shadowing senior leaders at work allows you to observe the variety of skills required for their roles – particularly skills that may be new to you such as influencing and negotiating.

After a period of shadowing, you may find it helpful to reflect on your experience and what you’ve learnt.

Working across different teams

Colleagues from different teams across your organisation have a wealth of knowledge and experiences that can support your own learning. Working with these teams will help build your awareness of their skills, as well as create positive working relationships.

You could seek out opportunities to work on projects with different teams where appropriate. For example, a project to improve a service can help strengthen teamworking as well as patient outcomes.

Compassionate workplace cultures

Compassionate leadership results in inclusive workplace cultures and improved patient care. It is vital that you are able to see this in your senior leaders and look to them to role model compassionate behaviours yourself.

Try to understand your own biases. This will make sure that recruitment and promotion opportunities are fair, as well as improve your working relationships.

Employers’ leadership 

Mentoring

Mentors can support doctors to gain everyday leadership skills in a team, offer career support, and help to identify the right career opportunities. Mentors do not need to be in clinical roles, but you can help them to develop authentic relationships with their mentee. Maintaining a network of mentors in an organisation allows colleagues to support each other, share good practice and increase their confidence in this role.

Good mentoring involves listening, supporting, sharing and challenging doctors’ thinking and practices. Openness and accessibility are also key skills in mentoring. You can encourage this to allow doctors to access support when they need it most.

Inclusive talent recognition and development

Robust, fair and transparent talent recognition and development is essential to address under-representation of doctors applying for formal leadership roles. You can consider offering coaching conversations as part of the recruitment process. Not only will this help and encourage doctors to apply for roles, but it can also support groups of doctors who have been historically under-represented in formal leadership roles

Shadowing

You can offer doctors opportunities to shadow senior colleagues, such as service leaders, clinical directors, medical directors and members of the executive board. This will give them early exposure to formal leadership roles.

Taster sessions are a great way to learn through experience or learn by ‘doing’.

Working across different teams

Opportunities to work on projects with senior colleagues can lead to service improvements. For example, this may be setting up a new clinical pathway or service. You can offer doctors opportunities to work on these types of projects with senior colleagues to build their confidence.

The benefits of leadership development are not limited to clinical service but extend to research activity, education and training too. In turn, this contributes to doctors’ increased job satisfaction and retention.

Local programmes

To make sure any organisational leadership programme is a success, it must take place locally with regular and timely feedback. A local programme can aim to instil organisational or Trust values. You may also choose to incorporate it into an induction for doctors who are new to the organisation, as well as those coming from training roles.

A bespoke, local programme is likely to influence organisational culture and encourage one which prioritises compassion and patient safety.

Compassionate and inclusive leadership

Recognising and celebrating compassionate leaders in the organisation means that others can see what ‘good’ leadership looks like. It’s vital that you recognise and celebrate these types of leaders. Not only does this encourage compassionate workplace cultures, but it can improve the retention of doctors.

Responsible officers’ leadership 

Learning through experience

Medicine is usually taught and learnt by ‘doing’. But, this is more of a challenge when it comes to leadership skills. Empowering doctors to learn through experience is key to their development as a leader.

The mentor/mentee relationship

You can encourage doctors at all levels to get the most from their relationship with their mentor, as this relationship is likely to aid doctors’ leadership development throughout their career. It is also important for doctors to understand what a good mentor looks like and how they may be able to personify this themselves.

When the time is right, you can encourage doctors to reflect on leadership activities such as shadowing and leading internal projects. Self-refection is a key skill in leadership development and will enhance any previous learning.

Diversity and inclusion

Understanding the importance of diversity early in a doctor’s career is key to ensuring tomorrow’s leaders reflect the diversity of the workforce. Inclusive leadership has also been demonstrated to result in improved patient care.

Working across different teams

As healthcare teams continue to grow and doctors interact with colleagues across health, social care and management, they would benefit from integrating with these colleagues early on, and with a greater emphasis on multiprofessional learning.

How can you support appraisers?

You may wish to encourage appraisers to discuss leadership development as a routine part of an annual appraisal. This will help normalise leadership skills as a part of continuous professional development.

I would also encourage you to feel empowered to share your own experiences of leadership irrespective of whether you hold formal roles or qualifications.