Day 78: Specialists Are Leaders Too!

 Are you in a role where you are a specialist and/or expert? Then you are in a leadership position.  This applies equally to nurses, social workers, doctors, pharmacists, people working in finance, HR, and other specialisms within health and social care.

When you are a person that others look to for advice, expertise, and support, they also look to you for leadership.  Nationally, as a health and social care system we under-invest in leadership development of people in specialist roles.  This results in poor leadership, which leads to bad culture, poorer outcomes and experiences for those who use our services.

Day 30: Make Mistakes Positively

When you make mistakes, fail fast, fail forward and, face the future.  Use your mistakes and those of others around you as learning opportunities, not ‘failures’. 

When I make a mistake, I can beat myself up about it; I sometimes struggle to respond positively to my emotional response. This can reduce my ability to learn properly from it.

In organisations providing health and social care services, as leaders we need to create the climate and culture for people to make mistakes, but in a safe environment.  Great leaders create space and provide resources for people to ‘try dangerous things carefully’.