Darshna Patel, leading with kindness

Darshna Patel is Deputy Head of Workforce Planning for Health Education England, former Vaccine Programme Director for Kingsbury Mandir, and a GP Pharmacist.

The role of Health Education England is to support the delivery of excellent healthcare and healthcare improvement. It does this by ensuring that the workforce of tomorrow is sufficient in number and has the right skills, values, and behaviours.

Darshna qualified as a pharmacist before moving into NHS management. A talk by someone from GlaxoSmithKline inspired her to take up pharmacy. She found that she enjoyed the people and patients dimension of hospital pharmacy, and that in turn led her into general practice, and then a lead role in a Primary Care Network.

More recently she has specialised in workforce planning. She describes her career to date as a “meandering river”, led by her values and interests.

Darshna was named as one of the 50 Leading Lights in the 2021 Kindness and Leadership Awards, partly in recognition of her work in setting up the world’s first vaccination centre in a Hindu temple, The Kingsbury Mandir. She sees kindness as crucial to effective leadership, particularly where collaboration is involved, which means virtually all situations in the ‘social age.’ “It’s about valuing what… everyone brings to the table” she says.

Her outlook is strongly informed by her first-hand experience of positivity and kindness at work. In her first job as a hospital pharmacist, she found herself faced with a myriad of ethical dilemmas. A conversation with a ward matron helped to validate her experience, and uphold her values when she felt most vulnerable.

For Darshna, the three pillars of leading with kindness are: making ripples – small acts that serve to change a culture over time; nurturing psychological safety – discussing the concept, co-creating a list of behaviours that make it real; being authentically kind – challenging your intent.

In her Leading Lights interview, Darshna used Julian Stodd’s expression ‘the Social Age’. He talks about the rise of the rise of “radically connected, and empowered, social communities.” Darshna rejects the idea that she and Julian are being irrationally positive. She has sat with the concept for some time and believes it explains a lot of her experiences in relation to the pace of change and communication.

Darshna is writing a chapter in Amar Rughani and Joanna Bircher’s latest book, “Leadership Hikers.” (Amar Rughani was our guest in episode 33 of this podcast.) The subject will be ‘leading with kindness.’ It has helped her process and reflect on her experiences, particularly at the vaccination centre.

Darshna believes that kindness has a key role to play in navigating the current crisis in the NHS, with particular regard to staff mental health, innovation, retention, and patient wellbeing. She offers the performance of the Kingsbury Mandir as an example of what is possible when one builds an organisation using kindness as a guiding principle.

Darshna sees mistakes as opportunities for learning and growth. If there is one thing she could have done better in recent times, it is looking after herself in order to be able to look after others.

Nowadays, Darshna is more intentional about self-care. She practices yoga, tries to eat well, , and goes for long walks. On her walks she practices gratitude, which she says is the precursor of joy.

Darshna is a practicing Hindu. Her spiritual leader, who sadly departed in 2020, has been a significant inspiration on her journey. He was someone who led a worldwide faith, while maintaining the ability to connect closely with individuals, and he personally embodied kindness.

Darshna recommends Brene Brown’s podcasts ‘Dare to Lead’ and ‘Unlocking Us.’ She has recently read Brene’s book ‘Atlas of the Heart.’ At present she is reading ‘The Gifts of Imperfection.’