There is wide consensus that navigating through the current public health crisis requires a different approach and style to leadership, one which is adaptive, collaborative, and human-centric. However, advocates across different sectors highlight that human-centric approaches to leadership should not be temporary or situational fix for challenging times, but a way of leading that is needs to stay. 

The essence of Leadership resides in relationships at multiple levels of organisations, although it is often assumed as a top-down and rationalistic task. Long-standing advocates highlight that compassionate leadership is essential for healthy and productive workplaces and to successful outcomes. The patient safety movement strongly supports compassionate leadership, as it has proven to positively change the culture of care delivery and consequently often reduce incidents of patient harm. In other sectors as IT, proponents of agile leadership make a direct link between trust, meaningful working relationships and learning cultures with more productivity and innovative deliverables. 

Despite the growing body evidence supporting human-centric leadership, this approach is still not widely adopted. Questions remain around how best to debunk myths on kindness in leadership and how best to incentivize the adoption of this approach. For organisations committed to the agenda, culture change is a long and difficult process to lead. Leaders are therefore faced with a complex task in exceptionally challenging times.

In this webinar, Professor Michael West, Professor Michael West CBE, Senior Visiting Fellow, The King’s Fund and Professor of Organizational Psychology, Lancaster University will unpack compassionate leadership, its key elements and some strategies for delivering a culture of compassion. 

This event will complement Sciana programming, which has explored different forms and dimension of leadership for responding to and recovering from COVID-19.