The Florence Nightingale Foundation / Garfield Weston Foundation Leadership Scholarship – Final Report.

I am extremely grateful to the Florence Nightingale Foundation and the generous sponsorship of the Garfield Weston Foundation without whom the award of this leadership scholarship would not be possible. Special thanks also to Professor Dame Elizabeth Fradd, Professor Elizabeth Robb, and Sue Machell   all of whom have provided valuable coaching, personal and professional support during my leadership programme. I would also like to thank The Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust for providing the support to enable me to undertake the leadership course.

The Florence Nightingale leadership scholarship has genuinely had the most influence and made the most difference to me professionally and personally than any other experience in my entire nursing career.

The opportunity afforded to me through the Florence Nightingale Foundation Leadership Scholarship has given me the time, skills and opportunities through the colleagues that I have met, and the studies that I have undertaken to enable me to develop my strategic thinking, and behaviors well beyond my initial personal and professional boundaries. The scholarship has also given me greater confidence and understanding, of the importance and privilege I have in delivering my role, and opportunities to lead and influence a the delivery of safe and effective care both within and external to my organisaiton.

Not unique within the current NHS climate, my organisaiton has been the subject of intense regulatory scrutiny during my scholarship, and has seen significant changes at Board level; this experience has been extremely difficult for me as an individual, my colleagues and the wider organisaiton.  Undertaking the scholarship at this crucial time in my career has enabled me to gain key strategic and technical knowledge and skills, as well as the most supportive, practical and enabling coaching and mentorship that frankly, has enabled me to develop the resilience required to continue to deliver my role effectively.

The key developmental foundations of my scholarship commenced with the completion of a suite of personal assessment tools. The in-depth coaching sessions that followed up throughout my scholarship formed a strong basis for my personal development. The process was the most comprehensive personal assessment that I have received in my career. The methods used both during my individual coaching sessions and during the co-consulting sessions, enabled me to fully understand the outcome of the assessments in terms of my preferred style, however more crucially it has enabled me to develop my relationships with others, appreciating how I can be more effective, both as an individual and a leader.

The LCOR  (Leading Change and Organizational Renewal) residential course – was one of the most life changing courses I have attended. I really was not sure what to expect. The pre-reading was difficult, focused around military and business leadership an area that I have not previously looked at. It is very difficult to summarize such an intensive 3-4 days. I will begin with the course and end with my colleagues. The residential nature of the course enabled time and space to fully immerse ourselves in the content and theme of leadership, culture, business and its applicability to healthcare, we had hours of professional debate, national and international learning, and for me personally, it highlighted the need to truly reflect and develop active listening skills. Quickly I realized that this course was not going to equip me with yet more technical skills on which to take back to the workplace and implement- this course was focused on development of personal leadership skills, giving me tools to undertake reflection, diagnostics around culture and colleagues and begin to take time to plan my patient care project in the level of detail that is deserved. The standard of facilitation was second to none – and to have such concentrated time with the course director Peter Finklestein was a true privilege.

Now, to my fellow scholars- As a group of eighteen senior healthcare professionals form varied backgrounds, by the Sunday evening it was starting to feel like we had been matched more than could be possible. We felt like a team from a very early stage, never tiring of debate, supporting each other, energized by each other all consistently contributing to the agenda. It may sound corny, particularly from an ESTJ! But something special will come form the fellows of 2014, with a 4-country tour already in the planning.

Such was the level of intensity of LCOR, we did not step foot outside of our hotel, or the bubble of our cohort from Sunday – Wednesday. On Wednesday afternoon, we presented our learning to Liz Robb and Bryan Sanderson– my group choosing a board meeting style for the in-depth RCA of Julie Tunney’s’ project around compassion, followed by a fairly emotional “check out” of reflections of the course. We then headed to London to attend the FNF 2014 conference.

The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) experience provided used skills that form basic training for actors… think, breathe, speak became our mantra and though the variety of exercises the methods helped with the confidence building of how our voice and body language in particular assists in everyday presentation skills when communicating with teams in the work setting.

I have attended two of three modules of the senior executive programme run by Ashridge Business School. This is a programme that I would highly recommend – with three, three-day modules delivered over 12 months – a faculty of high caliber staff have progressed my cohort through the following areas:

Module one: Essentials of Strategic Leadership

  • Exploring the role that strategy plays in organisational success
  • Understanding what great strategy is and apply it to a real case
  • Gaining insight into my leadership beliefs and style and how I perform under pressure
  • Learning how to design and lead a strategy development process to create a robust plan
  • Examining corporate culture, to identify where change is needed and understand how to make it work in my organisation.

We worked towards presenting our analysis of our organizations’ strategy for group feedback and action planning.

Module two: Leading Change and Growth

  • We explored the different types of change organisations face
  • We discussedtools and frameworks to use to implement or manage change
  • We looked at how to lead people through change and examine potential routes to growth for organisations
  • We considered ‘game changers’ like climate change and how they affect sustained organisational success.

We had a choice of elective sessions and workshops, as well as a one-to-one coaching session.

Module three: Your Agenda- I will be attending this in June 2015 due to maternity leave – and look forward to:

  • Drawing on all the programme material to date, to enable my planning to make a presentation on the issues I am facing and my plans for the implementation of my strategy
  • I will look at how to use coaching to get the best from my team.
  • I will work on communicating my vision and selling my strategy with a RADA trained actor!
  • Having developed my own model for leadership, I will plan and present a personal statement for review by my peers.
  • Along with my choice of elective session and a one-to-one coaching session, I will work on the goals and actions you will take back to my workplace in my 100-day plan.

Post-programme

I will receive a follow-up one-to-one coaching session, usually around three months after the final module.  100 days after the final module, my programme tutor, to check my progress on my 100-day plan, will contact me.

Due to high absence rates form nurse vacancies, sickness, attrition, and low engagement scores etc. in my trust I developed an interest in the US magnet model of accreditation. My project was to develop a 5-year plan towards accreditation, with the delivery of year one being my key focus.

The Ashridge programme to date has enabled a draft delivery plan to agree with my new CEO.

From a technical skills perspective – I have undertaken a number of development courses that have introduced me to the use of a number of leadership, change management and strategy development tools that have already begun to provide a crucial evidence base on which to build the delivery of my required objectives. On a personal development level – again, without exception all of the opportunities that I have undertaken have given me many skills on which I will aim to continue to build on and grow. Throughout the entirety of the scholarship, the coaching and mentorship that I have received has truly given me the personal resilience to enable effective delivery at a challenging time in my career. I finish the scholarship on a positive note –During the scholarship, I was appointed substantively to the role of Chief Nurse, I am working in an organization under the new leadership of a CEO who has put staff engagement and quality improvement very firmly at the top of his priorities, I am excited to continue this journey and build upon the building blocks of magnet accreditation thus far, and am confident that we have every opportunity to succeed. Thank you Florence nightingale Foundation and Garfield Weston Foundation.

Sam Foster

Chief Nurse Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust.

March 2015

Share this: