Meeting today’s healthcare leadership challenges: is compassionate, caring and inclusive leadership the answer?

Edwards, Luke D; Till, Alex; McKimm, Judy

doi:10.1136/leader-2017-000031

Cited by 11 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…'Culture change and continual improvement come from what leaders do, through their commitment, encouragement, compassion and modelling of appropriate behaviours'. [3] For an organisation to nurture a culture of compassion, its leaders must embody compassion in their leadership [4,5]. Moreover, as de Zulueta [6] has underlined, experiencing compassion makes people more able to show compassion to others, conducing to a virtuous spiral.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Enactment of compassionate leadership by nursing and midwifery managers: results from an international online survey

Papadopoulos

Wright

Lazzarino

et al. 2021

leader

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AimTo explore the views of an international sample of nursing and midwifery managers concerning attributes that they associate with compassionate management.MethodA cross-sectional online survey. Using a snowballing sampling method, 1217 responses were collected from nursing and midwifery managers in 17 countries. A total of complete 933 responses to a question related to which actions and behaviours indicated that a manager was exercising compassionate leadership were analysed for this paper. First, content analysis of the responses was conducted, and second, a relative distribution of the identified themes for the overall sample and for each participating country was calculated.ResultsSix main themes were identified describing the attributes of a compassionate leader: (1) Virtuous support, (2) Communication, (3) Personal virtues of the manager, (4) Participatory communication, (5) Growth/flourishing/ nurturing and (6) Team cohesion. The first three themes mentioned above collectively accounted for 63% of the responses, and can therefore be considered to be the most important characteristics of compassionate management behaviour.ConclusionThe key indicators of compassionate management in nursing and midwifery which were identified emphasise approachability, active and sensitive listening, sympathetic responses to staff members’ difficulties (especially concerning child and other caring responsibilities), active support of and advocacy for the staff team and active problem solving and conflict resolution. While there were differences between the countries’ views on compassionate healthcare management, some themes were widely represented among different countries’ responses, which suggest key indicators of compassionate management that apply across cultures.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For an organisation to nurture a culture of compassion, its leaders must embody compassion in their leadership 4 5. Moreover, as de Zulueta6 has underlined, experiencing compassion makes people more able to show compassion to others, conducing to a virtuous spiral.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Enactment of compassionate leadership by nursing and midwifery managers: results from an international online survey

Papadopoulos

Wright

Lazzarino

et al. 2021

leader

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“…Health care requires coordinated, decisive leadership, particularly in a crisis to provide guidance and mobilize action toward a common goal. The pandemic has provided many examples of caring and compassionate health leadership in Canada (Dickson and Tholl, 2020; de Zulueta, 2016; Edwards et al , 2018). One such example comes from Dr Bonnie Henry’s mantra as the Provincial Health Officer of British Columbia: “be kind, be calm, be safe.” While top-down, assertive, directive leadership styles may have seemed necessary at the beginning of the crisis, as the pandemic unfolded, they had to be balanced with the use of more inclusive leadership styles (Sukhera et al , 2020a, b), to pull people together in a manner needed to manage the pandemic.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Leading through the first wave of COVID: a Canadian action research study

Hartney

Melis²,

Taylor

et al. 2021

LHS

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Purpose This first phase of a three-phase action research project aims to define leadership practices that should be used during and after the pandemic to re-imagine and rebuild the health and social care system. Specifically, the objectives were to determine what effective leadership practices Canadian health leaders have used through the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, to explore how these differ from pre-crisis practices; and to identify what leadership practices might be leveraged to create the desired health and care systems of the future. Design/methodology/approach The authors used an action research methodology. In the first phase, reported here, the authors conducted one-on-one, virtual interviews with 18 health leaders from across Canada and across leadership roles. Data were analyzed using grounded theory methodology. Findings Five key practices emerged from the data, within the core dimension of disrupting entrenched structures and leadership practices. These were, namely, responding to more complex emotions in self and others. Future practice identified to create more psychologically supportive workplaces. Agile and adaptive leadership. Future practice should allow leaders to move systemic change forward more quickly. Integrating diverse perspectives, within and across organizations, leveling hierarchies through bringing together a variety of perspectives in the decision-making process and engaging people more broadly in the co-creation of strategies. Applying existing leadership capabilities and experience. Future practice should develop and expand mentorship to support early career leadership. Communication was increased to build credibility and trust in response to changing and often contradictory emerging evidence and messaging. Future practice should increase communication. Research limitations/implications The project was limited to health leaders in Canada and did not represent all provinces/territories. Participants were recruited through the leadership networks, while diverse, were not demographically representative. All interviews were conducted in English; in the second phase of the study, the authors will recruit a larger and more diverse sample and conduct interviews in both English and French. As the interviews took place during the early stages of the pandemic, it may be that health leaders’ views of what may be required to re-define future health systems may change as the crisis shifts over time. Practical implications The sponsoring organization of this research – the Canadian Health Leadership Network and each of its individual member partners – will mobilize knowledge from this research, and subsequent phases, to inform processes for leadership development and, succession planning across, the Canadian health system, particularly those attributes unique to a context of crisis management but also necessary in post-crisis recovery. Social implications This research has shown that there is an immediate need to develop innovative and influential leadership action – commensurate with its findings – to supporting the evolution of the Canadian health system, the emotional well-being of the health-care workforce, the mental health of the population and challenges inherent in structural inequities across health and health care that discriminate against certain populations. Originality/value An interdisciplinary group of health researchers and decision-makers from across Canada who came together rapidly to examine leadership practices during COVID-19’s first wave using action research study design.

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“…Compassionate care for patients and staff should be the foundation of all health and social care (Hewison & Sawbridge, 2016) and it has been argued that to harness the power of leadership in health care, there is a need to develop and support clinical leaders (Imison, 2018). Compassionate, caring and inclusive leadership (Edwards, Till, & McKimm, 2018) may be what health and social care need; however, if this vision is to become a reality, then the approach needs to be developed, tested and evaluated to contribute to the evidence base for clinical leadership. Compassion can be interpreted in a number of ways (Singh, King‐Shier, & Sinclair, 2018), and ensuring that leadership maintains a focus on an inherently complex concept is by no means straightforward, but such an approach is vital to serve as a corrective to the corrosive and negative effects of austerity and command and control approaches which can result in incivility, and has a destructive effect on the workplace and patient care (Armstrong, 2018).…”

Section: Opportunitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Leading nursing beyond 2020 – the challenge and the opportunity

Hewison

2020

J Nurs Manag

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Meeting today’s healthcare leadership challenges: is compassionate, caring and inclusive leadership the answer?

Cited by 11 publications

References 18 publications

Enactment of compassionate leadership by nursing and midwifery managers: results from an international online survey

Enactment of compassionate leadership by nursing and midwifery managers: results from an international online survey

Leading through the first wave of COVID: a Canadian action research study

Leading nursing beyond 2020 – the challenge and the opportunity

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