Acknowledgements
I am grateful for the opportunities made available to me to develop as a leader that have been provided by the Florence Nightingale Foundation and the James Tudor Foundation. I would like to thank Professor Liz Robb for her support and encouragement for me to develop as a leader.
I am grateful to Richard Beazley for his perceptive insights and encouragement as mymentor. I am also indebted to the staff at HammondCare, Australia who provided thefinal placement of my scholarship. Their kindness and investment of their time tosupport my learning demonstrated how leaders encourage and enable others tomaximise their impact.
The professional training provided by Sue Machell, Cumberledge, Eden and Partners,RADA and Stanford Postgraduate Business School ensured that I gained knowledgeand skills throughout the scholarship.
I would like to thank my colleagues at the University of Salford for their support for mewhile undertaking this scholarship.
Abstract
The aim of the scholarship was to develop my knowledge and skills to be an effectiveleader in the context of society’s approach to dementia.
Objectives of the scholarship:
- To understand my intuitive approach to leadership
- To identify my strengths as a leader and aspects of my approach to
- leadership that required development
- To develop collaboration between the Salford Institute for Dementia and
- Dementia United (Devolution Manchester)
- To support the development of colleagues at the Salford Institute for
- Dementia so that they are able to optimise their contribution to society’s
- approach to dementia
- To consolidate my approach to work-life balance for the next stage of my career.
As a result of the scholarship I have reflected on my intuitive approach to leadership as described in George et al.’s (2007) account of authentic leadership. The life experience, knowledge and skills that I had gained in my life proved to be valuable resources that have now been enhanced by the addition of new knowledge, skills, experiences and reflection.
The experiences engaged in though the scholarship helped me to identify my strengths as a leader and aspects of my approach to leadership that required development. Through the leadership assessments undertaken with Sue Machell. I gained an insight into the aspects of my personality, identity and approach to leadership. This enabled me to focus my development in a way that enhanced my authentic approach to leadership whilst identifying traits that could potentially minimise my effectiveness as a leader. This learning was further supported by the Coconsulting exercise undertaken with fellow leadership scholars and facilitated by Sue Machell. This exercise provided a safe space within which to explore my areas for development as a leader while contributing to the opportunity for fellow scholars to explore their development needs.
A similar learning experience was gained through the RADA communication skills for leadership training. Through the safe and challenging exercises facilitated by the trainer and supported by my fellow scholars my communication style has changed irreversibly; so now think, breath, speak is my default approach to verbal communication. The Westminster Experience proved to be the catalyst for the development of a completely new understanding of politics within leadership.
By engaging in these four learning experiences I had embodied the new communication skills and developed confidence in my leadership abilities and capacity. This meant that when I attended the Managing Teams for Innovation and Success programme at Stanford Post Graduate Business School (2016). I was able to make optimal use of the intensive leadership programme both in terms of the knowledge and skills acquisition facilitated by the programme tutors but also to make optimal use of the knowledge and skills acquisition opportunities available through interactive with 50 other like-minded leadership students on the programme.
Back in my local context of Salford, I had identified leading collaboration between the Salford Institute for Dementia and the pan Manchester integrated health and social care approach to dementia, Dementia United as the work based project of the scholarship. This required relationship building with several people: Maxine Power(C.E.O. Haelo), Rt. Hon. Hazel Blears, Rachel Volland (Director Haelo and Programme Lead for Dementia United), Paul Denett (Mayor of Salford), the Industry Collaboration Zone (ICZ) project team at the University of Salford, members of the Greater Manchester wide EU reference site for healthy and active ageing and the newDirector of the Salford Institute for Dementia.
Dementia United is guided by five pledges
- Improving the lived experience of people with dementia and their carers
- Reducing variation in care quality
- The introduction of a key worker for each person with dementia
- To co-produce and re-design services
- Access to the best assistive technology.
These pledges are to be implemented by 2021 and require collaboration between health and social care organisations.
Dementia United pledge:
- Improving the lived experience of people with dementia and their carers
I have led the development of a team of Dementia Associates at the Institute. The Dementia Associates are people living with dementia and their carers who contribute to the research, innovation and education projects at the university and with our local, regional and European partners.
This means that the knowledge that we generate at the university is relevant to improving the lived experience of people living with dementia and their carers. Involvement in this work also improves the lived experience of people with dementia and their carers.
Some of the Dementia Associates are actively involved in advising the development activities of Dementia United.
- Reducing variation in care quality
With colleagues at the Institute we have developed an innovative online dementia education programme that is part of every module of the undergraduate nursing degree programme at the University. The undergraduate student nurses undertake clinical placements in a wide variety of care settings across Greater Manchester.
The aim of the dementia education programme is to equip the students with knowledge to provide individualised, enabling care for each person with dementia who they care and support and for the family carers.
We are now developing an online continuous professional development (CPD) dementia education programme aimed at organisations who typically do not fund university education for staff e.g. small –medium sized care homes, domiciliary care providers. The CPD modules are provided in a cost effective manner with options of five week blocks, with or without assessment. I led a European Union funded project which had six European universities as partners to develop the content of these modules. The modules are now being tailored to the local needs of each European region, in the case of the Institute this is Salford, Greater Manchester and the UK.
I am the university representative for the Manchester EU reference site for Healthy and Active Ageing. I contribute to the dementia related aspects of this this work which is developing evidence based approaches to healthy and active ageing across Greater Manchester.
- The introduction of a key worker for each person with dementia
and
- To co-produce and re-design services
I am a Vice-Chair and one of the founding members of the Salford Dementia Action Alliance. The Salford Dementia Action Alliance is one of 303 Alliances across England and we have developed into one of the largest Alliances across the country with more than 80 different local organisations as members. At our quarterly meetings we support member organisations as they share their action plan updates and experiences, learn from fellow members and work together to complete action plans. This means that local organisations are well positioned to contribute to the Dementia United programme when integrated services are re-designed and projects such as the introduction of key workers for people with dementia are introduced.
Dementia United pledge:
- Access to the best assistive technology
At the Salford Institute for Dementia we have several members who are computer scientist and robotic engineers. I have supported these members to develop their understanding of dementia and the needs of people who have dementia so that they are able to plan and undertake research projects to generate knowledge of how assistive technology can enable people with dementia and their carers to live well.This has resulted in the funding of a living lab, a research environment that can be configured to represent the real world environments in which assistive technology my enable people with dementia to live well.
I have used the funds of the Institute to purchase equipment for our monitoring and falls team to develop their work in order to undertake research of falls prevention for people living with dementia. These members of the Institute have now collaborated with a wider Dementia United consortium who are in the second stage of applying for funding for a project between the University of Salford, Oxford University, Salixhomes and Salford Royal Hospital. Salix Homes is a social housing provider of homes in Greater Manchester. The proposed research is a collaboration between the four partner organisations. The first phase of the research project is to explore how assistive technology can be embedded in people’s homes to assist with the early identification of falls risks, with particular reference to falls prevention for people with dementia.
Through all of the above activities I had developed a clear understanding of my philosophy for leadership: Maximising Impact through Knowledge, Passion and People. I learnt that my authentic leadership style was to enable and encourage others through the engagement with and development of knowledge, an understanding and valuing of the power of having passion for action and the vital component of bringing people together to collaborate for greater impact. Through my placement with HammondCare (Australia) I was able to explore how the leaders of this dementia care organisation facilitated the maximisation of the impact of their staff through knowledge, passion and people. Whilst also consolidating the value of encouraging and enabling staff within an organisation.
As a result of the HammondCare experience I now have a clear strategy of how to support the development of colleagues at the Salford Institute for Dementia so that they are able to optimise their contribution to society’s approach to dementia.
Finally by building relationships with the leaders I met and interacted with throughout the scholarship I was able to explore their personal leadership narratives and thereby more clearly articulate and value my own leadership narrative. This also included exploration of people’s approach to work-life balance and thereby consolidate my approach to work-life balance for the next stage of my career as a leader who will make an ongoing contribution to society as a nurse who understands the impact of the environment on wellbeing of older people and people living with dementia in society.
This learning journey reinforces Florence Nightingale’s approach to nursing and society. I am excited to see how I can go on to maximise impact through knowledge,passion and people in this next stage of my career.