The next two-part Health Leaders Institute will be held May 24-27th, and November 7-9, 2011 at the BMO Institute for Learning. There are 96 places.  Brochure will be posted soon. To Register, 416 426-7280 or email: info.leader.institute@firststageinc.com.

The first part of the Dorothy Wylie Nursing and Health Leaders Institute was held May 25-28 with a full roster of participants from Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.  It was a pleasure to work with 96 keen and dynamic participants who came with exciting projects which were developed over the course of the week.   Jim Kouzes, Jacoba Lilius and Rick Lash were with us as guests during the 4 day program.  And 4 well known old rockers attended the Karaoke session Thursday evening with their rendition of Satisfaction.  A fun time was had by all who attended.  Participants returned home Friday afternoon with lots of new theories, models, tools, ideas and colleagues.  We are currently planning the 3 day followup session to be held November 8-10.  For more information about the next full program to be held in Spring 2011, please call Sue Munro at First Stage (416) 426-7229.
Brochure | Registration Form

I can’t help thinking with the long weekend here that you are getting ready for the Dorothy Wylie Nursing & Health Leaders Institute. I thought you might like to hear what we have been up to. Last year I attended with my manager Pam Westover from the ICU at the Henderson Hospital, Hamilton Health Sciences. Our project was to prepare the staff to move from our present hospital the Henderson to the new Juravinski Hospital. Last fall my poster board was the Inukshuk on a path.

I was so impressed with Mr. Posner’s Leadership Challenge that I based my entire project on his framework. I started with a logo, a slogan, Critical Care ….On The Path, with an Inukshuk, as the mascot (inspiring a vision). The Inukshuk was built with 6 stones to reflect our four corporate values and we will name the other two stones to reflect our unit values (modeling the way). Next, it led to a newsletter, “Our Journey” and a Journey Board as a communication tool. We are working on a “Passport”, an education tool to assist staff with their learning needs for the new area (challenge the process). We have had small focus groups and I have engaged some of the nurses working on their degrees to work on the hands on learning mock set-up room, for a project for school (enable others to act). We are getting all the disciplines engaged, it’s crazy, about 115 staff. On April 23, Pam and I were asked to speak at the Hamilton Health Sciences Leadership Forum on “Sharing Our Success”. We did a 10 minute slide presentation then showed a video clip that we filmed in our ICU and CCU, to 270 leaders, CEO, VP’s directors, managers. We got a standing ovation. When we came off the stage the CEO and the key note speaker, Don Alison from “Mark of a Leader” came to greet us and congratulate us on an “amazing presentation”. We were certainly overwhelmed with the response.

This week we launched the entire project with two staff luncheons, food, what’s ahead and T shirts for every staff member. The shirt has the logo on the front and the back says..Critical Care Rocks…(ROCK stands for our ROCK awards, Recognising Outstanding Care and Kindness (Encourage the Heart), Be Part Of The Journey (encourage the heart).

This week our CEO is coming to meet the staff as he was so impressed with our project. We move to the new hospital on August 1, but the project will continue as the McMaster adult ICU will move next April with their staff. Pam has been a great support to me as well.

This has been an amazing ride, I can’t thank the three of you enough for the knowledge and encouragement I took away from the 2009 Institute that I never knew I had. Over the last year I have grown so much from the experience, it has simply been amazing! If you are interested in hearing more about how we are doing, please let me know.

On this path, I have learned so much about the “Leadership Challenge”. Leadership really is…..

• Inspiring a shared vision when everything is clear as mud
• Modeling the way when everyone is going in the opposite direction
• Challenging the process when that mountain seems too high to climb
• Enabling others to act when you can’t find them…. and
• Encourage the heart when it has stopped beating

But within myself I have discovered….. “Follow your dreams…they will take you to new beginnings and adventures!”

Janet MacIntyre RN

We often hear about the need for leadership in health care practice.  Yet for many, the word leader is just another buzzword.  We often think leaders are born not made, and leadership is for others with important titles, nice offices and assistants at the door.

Our experiences with the Dorothy Wylie Nursing and Health Leaders Institute, now in its 10^th year with over 2300 alumni, provide us with a different mental model.  We believe that building leadership skills and developing leadership competence and confidence is important for every health professional.  We believe leadership makes a profound difference in the quality of care patients receive. We believe that health professionals who see themselves as leaders will make a difference in every patient and family interaction.

The Leadership Institute uses Kouzes and Posner’s 5 Practices as the basis of its development programs, the keys to leadership that health professionals need to understand, value and acquire.  The 5 Practices are: Model the Way; Inspire Shared Vision; Challenge the Process; Enable Others to Act and Encourage the Heart.

Good leadership is an essential ingredient in creating high quality workplaces for health professionals and safe care places for patients.  Strong leadership benefits patients in a number of ways.  Leaders who model the way by focusing their attention on high quality care and patient safety will create a workplace where safety consciousness is the norm.  It takes leaders promoting it, and encouraging and rewarding health professionals who improve it, to make awareness of patient safety part of the fabric of patient care units.

The key to understanding the role of leadership – despite the models of generals, presidents prime ministers, and sports heroes ingrained in our consciousness – is that leaders are not just the people at the top.  Leadership in the workplace needs to be much more broadly defined.  It’s not an instinct some of us have and others don’t.   It should be an expected part of every professional role.  We have to find the level at which every health professional is comfortable leading, and then we need to grow and stretch that mark.

Professionals who feel like leaders are more likely to have the courage to stand up in an unsafe situation or take a risk and challenge the status quo when they think there is a safety risk to patients.  Leadership is too important to be left to develop by chance as professionals gain experience.  Instead, leadership must be an integral part of education and training and an expectation in the jobs professionals do from the beginning of their careers.

Here are some important steps for developing leaders:

• Begin leadership development at the undergraduate level.  Start from the notion that every student is a potential leader by virtue of being in a program that leads to being a health professional.
• Introduce leadership concepts in lectures across the curriculum, and encourage students to use them in group projects, then emphasize them during fieldwork with mentoring and coaching to expand development.
• Explore leadership expectations during the job interview process.  Employers can pose a scenario requiring leadership and ask what the candidate would do.  Candidates should ask what the employer will do to support them in developing leadership skills.
• The message that leadership comes from everywhere should be part of new employee orientation.  Leadership can be encouraged throughout course work and experiences can be tailored to enable professionals to take the lead, with mentoring and coaching from managers and clinical specialists.
• In practice opportunities can be provided for direct care professionals to strengthen their leadership skills (e.g., coaching them on participating effectively in multidisciplinary rounds).
• Formal and informal opportunities can be created for every professional to lead a care team, a research project and other professional activities.
• Managers, advanced practice specialists and clinical educators can support leadership development as part of daily interactions and through the performance management process.
• Experimentation and risk-taking should be recognized and rewarded (e.g., staff members who take calculated risks and make difficult decisions when help is unavailable).
• Managers can identify and appreciate the things people are doing to promote patient safety and provide meaningful recognition and rewards.
• Leaders can remember that an important part of leadership is modeling behaviour to encourage leadership in others.
• Organizations can develop a formal mentorship program that engages senior staff and proven leadership skills to set the bar and coach newer staff.

Beverley Simpson, Julia Scott, Judith Skelton Green

**The paper was adapted from an interview with us that appeared in the Canadian Health Services Research Foundation’s Stories for Safety.

There is currently a wait list for 2010 programs. Please watch this space for information about the next program.

Julia writes…..As a fan of complex adaptive system theory, I was intrigued by the discussion of centralization versus decentralization in a recent book “The Wisdom of Crowds”, by Jim Surowiecki. Jim points out that in the past 15 years, increasing attention has been given to self-organizing and decentralized systems – systems without central control that connect, adapt and learn. He then discusses the failure of the American intelligence community to predict any of the 4 major terrorist attacks, from 1993 to 2001 and asks what went wrong. Surely these were independent, intelligent individuals and groups, working on roughly the same problem? Was decentralization the problem? Will the creation of a super centralized security agency solve the problem? According to Jim, decentralization’s great strength is that it encourages independence and specialization on the one hand while still allowing people to coordinate their activities and solve difficult problems on the other. It’s great weakness is that there is no guarantee that valuable information which is uncovered in one part of the system will find its way to others who require it. What is needed are systems where local knowledge and specialization are supported but there are tools or mechanisms to aggregate local knowledge and private information into a collective whole.

So, we can have decentralized staffing in hospitals, as long as there are processes to share information (and staff) across units. We can have central intake systems, as long as there are mechanisms to share information with local branches or units. Fascinating!

Morgan Freeman and Clint Eastwood have created another very special movie now playing across North America.  Invictus is the story of Nelson Mandela’s early days as President of South Africa, and particularly how he viewed the country’s Rugby team, the Springboks, and an upcoming World Cup event to be held in South Africa, as an opportunity to bring the country together.

The year is 1995.  Mandela (Freeman) is in his first term as President.  He recognizes the tremendous challenges facing his government in a land torn apart by apartheid. Racial tensions are at an all time high, people are struggling with the effects of crippling unemployment, and a new black government has shifted the balance of political power. 

The World Cup is to be held in South Africa.  Mandela senses that this might be a great opportunity to attempt to bring blacks and whites together with pride in a winning home team.  Traditionally whites cheered enthusiastically for the Springboks at every game.  The black population cheered for anyone else but the home team because they felt the team, and even the game itself, represented all that was white and oppressive in South Africa.

The Leadership Challenge and the 5 Practices deeply permeate Freeman’s portrayal of Mandela.  In several scenes Mandela’s quiet reflective confidence, his commitment to lead from values, the personal connection he makes with everyone he meets, are all evidence of his skill in calmly Modeling the Way.

One iconic scene features Mandela in his first meeting with Francois Pienaar, a white Africaaner and the Springboks captain, played beautifully by Matt Damon.  Pienaar is invited to meet the President and arrives at Government House with trepidation, uncertain of the reason for the meeting.  Mandela’s personal style, his warmth, the way he treats everyone around him with great respect and appreciation completely charms Pienaar who leaves with the realization that something very significant has just happened to him.  During their brief but meaningful time together Mandela has skillfully <strong>Inspired a Shared Vision</strong> about the importance and meaning of a Springboks win to South Africa.

The title of the movie Invictus comes from the Latin meaning Unconquered.  We are led to believe that Mandela had a poem written on a scrap of paper in his prison cell while he was incarcerated.  In the movie, Mandela gives the poem to the team captain Pienaar, before the start of the World Cup.  At one point in the story the Springboks are touring Robbin Island and Pienaar spends a quiet few minutes in Mandela’s old cell contemplating the kind of moral courage it would take to spend 27 years there.  He is transformed.

Mandela <strong>Challenges the Process</strong> beautifully in several scenes.  He consistently challenges his staff to think differently about issues and policies.  For example he challenges his black head of security to ensure his black staff works collaboratively with their more experienced white colleagues.  How they learn to work together as a single team, both cheering for the Springboks, provides one of several great sub-texts to the story.

Mandela challenges Pienaar to think positively and creatively about the possibility of a win even though the odds are stacked against them.  His challenge, his personal commitment, his quiet leadership enable Pienaar to begin to see the long shot as a possibility, thus <strong>Enabling him to Act </strong> to lead his team to train harder than ever.

A scene where the local (all black) sporting organization passes a motion to change the name of the team to suit a different blacker South Africa is a study in Challenging the Process when Mandela, despite the cautions of his aides to not get involved,  appears just after the vote to ask them to think differently.  When he gets only a small minority of the group on his side, he sees it as a small win rather than a defeat.

There are several scenes where Mandela demonstrates his expertise in <strong>Encouraging the Heart</strong>.  For instance, there is great love for him among his staff who affectionately call him Mandiba, the name of the clan of which he is a member. Mandiba is the name of a Thembu chief who ruled in the Transkei in the 18th century.  It is considered very polite to use someone’s clan name because it is much more important in this culture than a surname, referring as it does to the esteemed ancestor from which a person is descended.

In turn, Mandela is always interested in each of his staff members as individuals; he knows everyone by name, asks about their families, appreciates everything they do for him.  In one of the scenes Damon’s character watches him with admiration as he introduces and speaks with a woman who has brought in the tea.

In another memorable scene, Mandela quietly memorizes the names of each of the Springboks players so he can give them each a personal greeting.

Matt Damon is well cast as the captain of the team.  Francois Pienaar is an Africaaner whose father plays the redneck card saying things like “these people will ruin our country.”  Pienaar must reconcile his growing admiration and respect for Mandela with what he is hearing at home.  Obviously he was successful as it is said that today Mandela is Godfather to one of Pienaar’s children.

Like many others who have seen it, I was totally captured by this movie and all it can teach us about leadership, courage, building and sustaining relationships.  It is not so much a movie about a team that comes from behind to win the championship as it is about a process of leadership, vision, courage and commitment to build a unified country against steep odds.

Bev Simpson

Greetings Colleagues
Thanks to your continued support we are delighted to report that we will be offering another combined program in May 2010. Please register early and notify your colleagues of this opportunity. The 17th Dorothy Wylie Nursing / Health Leaders Institute will be held May 25-28 with follow-up November 8-10. For more information please call Katrin Wade at 416 426-7229.
Brochure | Registration Form

Update on our Strategic Alliance with CCHSE.
Congratulations to the many alumni who have successfully completed their CHE through this agreement:
Kim Alvarado, Jill Campbell, Priya Chetty, Tricia Cochrane, Tracey Davey, Sonja Glass, Farrah Hirji, Heather Hoxby, Catherine Kohm, Arden Krystal, Patricia Maxwell, Kathleen Millar, Lorraine Reynolds, and Myrna Suski. We are pleased to say that several more alumni are ‘in progress’ towards their Certified Health Executive (CHE) status.

Barry Posner is on Sabbatical
Barry is on leave from the Santa Clara University campus where he is Dean of the Leavey Business School and Professor of Leadership. He will be travelling and teaching in Hong Kong, Australia, South Africa, Istanbul, and London England. You can follow his leadership blog.

Downstream Research Project
In partnership with the Centre for Health Leadership and Research at Royal Roads University, Victoria, British Columbia, we are conducting an important and exciting research project. This research focuses on the “downstream” experiences of individuals who have received leadership development opportunities within the last few months. We are interested in the impact of leadership development programs on participants’ leadership behaviour after they return to their place of work, how their leadership activities are received, or taken up by, the home organization, and ultimately what impact those actions may actually have at an organizational level.

Participants have been invited from several organizations that offer distinct forms of leadership training. Graduates from DMW-NLI 14 and 15 and from HLI4 were invited to participate. Anita Snell at Royal Roads University in BC, who is leading the research team, tells us that 25 alumni from the DWNLI and HLI programs have been interviewed as subjects for the study. Anita says the sample size literature indicates that 25 is a very good number to provide data for a good thematic analysis. Anita reports that she anticipates starting the analysis by October and will have a final report by the end of November. We hope to have some results for our next newsletter.

Role Changes
We often receive messages from you telling us of your job changes and it is always a delight to hear what you are doing.
For example, Monica Codjoe, accepted the position of VP Patient Services and CNE at The Toronto Grace Health Centre in Toronto last Spring. She tells us she is enjoying her new responsibilities very much. Monica can be reached at mcodjoe@torontograce.org.

Many people have kindly told us that they use the Change Leadership Framework for projects they are involved with. Some have asked for a link to the paper we published not too long ago about leading change in healthcare organizations. It might be a useful addition to your toolkit. Enjoy!

A Special Thanks to our Sponsors
Johnson & Johnson Medical Products has been a steadfast supporter of the Dorothy Wylie Nursing Leadership Institute and the Health Leaders Institute for the last 7 years providing a generous donation that enables participation in the Institutes by graduate students and by small hospitals and agencies with modest education budgets. Our very special thanks to our friends at J&J.

Last year Wiley Canada, publishers of The Leadership Challenge answered our call to support the program with a generous donation. Here is some information about their work and a note of thanks from their Leadership Challenge team: Are Your Leaders Ready to Lead? Leadership is an ongoing process. To create better leaders, you have to encourage great learners. Judith Skelton Green, Julia Scott and Beverley Simpson, Wiley Canada Pfeiffer Partners, are devoted Leadership Challenge and Leadership Practices Inventory organizational consultants who have successfully implemented The Leadership Challenge and LPI across the healthcare industry.

The Leadership Challenge is an evidence-based approach to how leaders mobilize others to want to get extraordinary things done. It’s about the practices leaders use to transform values into actions, visions into realities, obstacles into innovations, separateness into solidarity, and risks into rewards. It’s about a climate in which people turn challenging opportunities into remarkable successes.

The Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI) is the best-selling and most trusted leadership tool of its generation. Developed by researchers and educators, Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner, the third edition of this celebrated instrument is available in both print and electronic versions and approaches leadership as a measurable, learnable, and teachable set of behaviours. This 360-degree leadership assessment tool helps individuals and organizations measure their leadership competencies, while guiding them through the process of applying Kouzes’ and Posner’s acclaimed Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership® to real-life organizational challenges.
As a result of completing an LPI assessment and using the Leadership Challenge® Workshop training, participants are able to:

• Identify their own strengths and areas of opportunity for development
• communicate fundamental values and beliefs
• Inspire others to share a common vision
• Search for opportunities to take the risk needed for growth
• Build collaboration, teamwork, and trust
• Strengthen others’ ability to excel
• Recognize the accomplishments of others

Bev is one of a handful of Master Facilitators offering The Leadership Challenge program – and the only one in Canada focused specifically on the health care sector – and has worked with many hospitals and health care agencies, helping their staff to gain a deeper understanding of the competencies of leadership and their application to nursing and health care. Wiley Canada applauds Judith, Julia and Bev’s efforts and wishes them continued success!

If you would like to receive more information on Wiley’s suite of leadership and training materials, please contact: Peter McFarland at: 613-236-1842 or peter.mcfarland@wiley.com for a complimentary Pfeiffer training and development catalogue.

To our alumni friends and colleagues, all best wishes, and please keep your notes and updates coming in.

Bev, Judy, Julia
judith.skelton-green@transitions-hod.ca
jscott@clarendonleadership.com
bev@beverleysimpson.com

April 2009 (pdf-71kb)
October 2008 (pdf-68kb)
May 2008 (pdf-117kb)
January 2008 (pdf-216kb)
November 2007 (pdf-230kb)
May 2007 (pdf-218kb)
December 2006 (pdf-365kb)
December 2005 (pdf-466kb)
Fall 2005 (pdf-88kb)
Spring 2005 (pdf-114kb)
December 2004 (pdf-119kb)
Summer 2004 (pdf-85kb)

We were commissioned by The Hospital for Sick Children to design and facilitate an inter-professional Leadership Institute in August 2008 and April 2009 specifically for 96 selected clinicians who focused their leadership on family-centered care and inter-professional practice. An evaluation process is currently underway. Watch for News here.