Michael West II, Michael's lockdown project

Michael West is Professor in organisational effectiveness and innovation, Lancaster University and Visiting Fellow to the King’s Fund, the NHS Think Tank. He is a former Executive Dean of Aston Business School.

This is Chris Whitehead’s second interview with Michael. If you want some background, please listen to episode 13 of the Compassionate Leadership Interview. In this present episode we are going to focus on Michael’s lockdown project, the book Compassionate Leadership: Sustaining Wisdom, Humanity and Presence in Health and Social Care.

Michael’s interest in compassion stems from his meditation practice, which has brought him into contact with world religions for which compassion is fundamental. At the same time, his research and consultancy work on leadership and culture, in industry and the NHS, highlighted the importance of positivity and relationships in teams and organisations to effectiveness, creativity, and innovation.

The pandemic created a space for Michael in which he could bring together research evidence, case studies, and practical approaches to compassionate leadership. The book was supported by Health Education and Improvement Wales, which has a 10-year strategy to implement compassionate leadership.

Organisational culture is a recurring theme in the book. Michael characterises a culture of compassion as one in which people are present with each other, there’s a strong emphasis on relationships, and there is a strong ethic of caring and support for people who are experiencing challenge or difficulty.

Michael believes there has been a “sea change” over the past two years in the leadership approach adopted by the NHS. And this applies to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland in particular. In England compassionate leadership is part of the NHS People Plan, but practice is less consistent.

Coaching and mentoring receive numerous mentions in Michael’s book. Coaching and mentoring are about being present, attending to the other, listening with fascination, helping them to articulate their thoughts, explore challenges, and be comfortable with ambiguity. Therefore coaching and mentoring formalise some of the behaviours of compassionate leadership.

In the book Michael says “experiencing compassion for others shapes individuals’ appraisals about themselves.” He believes when we experience an interaction with another who is truly present with us, it enables us to be more present with ourselves.

He says “it’s a myth that performance cannot be managed with compassion.” Michael believes that compassionate leadership actually enables a stronger emphasis on performance, because out of compassion comes a motivation for delivering high quality continually improving care. And it gives us the skills we need to listen to people and understand what is at the root of unsatisfactory performance.

Michael’s previous book was entitled ‘Effective Teamwork’ and this latest book is informed in part by that one. He uses the expression ‘real teams’ to refer to teams that have a clear purpose, shared goals, and take time out to reflect on their effectiveness.

Michael believes that compassionate leadership can help avoid scandals such as Mid Staffs, Bristol, and Alder Hey. The research he and colleagues conducted following Mid Staffs, revealed that in the Trusts that were less effective, senior leaders tended to be focused on managing upwards and ‘comfort eeking’ in their discussions with staff. In the highest performing organisations, leaders were focused on their vision for the Trust, and intent on ‘problem sensing’ in their staff interactions.

Michael contends that compassionate leadership is one of the keys to innovation, because it creates a psychologically safe environment, and that in turn enables the risk taking associated with innovation.

This year NHS Wales published their Compassionate Leadership Principles which they co-created with Michael. NHS Scotland has a programme called Project Lift (https://projectlift.scot/), which supports leadership at all levels and focuses on “relational leadership.” He says one of the advantages of Scotland and Wales is that there aren’t as many layers of hierarchy between ministers and the front line.

In the book Michael gives some beautiful examples of compassionate interventions by healthcare employers during the pandemic, but he says that “most of the compassion I saw was from individual practitioners to each other.”

Michael has now written or edited 21 books now, not including second and third editions. He is currently revising ‘Effective Teamwork.’ Beyond that he has a project that is focused on meditation, with the working title ‘Simply Being: the Practice, the Science, and the Pleasure of Meditation.’ Maybe, after that he will take to gardening.