The Compassionate Leadership Interview

Elena Armijo is a Certified Coach, Dare to Lead Facilitator, and founder of the C-Suite Collective, an organisation that supports women in the workplace.Elena started out as an opera singer. Music was a major element of the culture in Las Cruces, Texas, where she grew up. A masters degree in vocal performance was followed by a career singing opera internationally in her 20s and early 30s.She switched careers after a period of 4 years during which she spent 10 months a year on the road, and was in danger of becoming burnt out.  Her relationships were suffering.She enlisted a coach to help her take stock. She came to question some of her motives for her choice of vocation up until that point. The experience of working with a coach was pivotal to her, and she resolved to qualify as a coach herself.Elena contends that we need more women in positions of power because they bring a sense of empathy and compassion. It’s not that men don’t have these qualities, but the tradition of male leadership, particularly in the US, is one of power dynamics and control. Men and women have things to teach one another. For example, from the men that have mentored Elena, she has learnt to find her voice and stand up for herself.Elena maintains that “high-achieving women are under-supported in the workplace at every level”: because they are one in a sea of many they don’t often get their needs met. For example, they may need flexibility around parenting, maternity leave, or emotional bandwidth generally. They need supporting from a different perspective. The same HR package can’t be expected to work for everyone.Initially the pandemic exacerbated the situation that women face. In dual-income families it was often the woman who gave up her position in order to home school. However, after two years of the pandemic, a more nuanced conversation is emerging in relation to needs and support.Elena believes excellence in supporting women is characterised by a culture in which women are free to say what is on their minds, where shame is surfaced, and where mental health issues, including incipient burnout, are addressed as they emerge. Coaching can play a key role in this.The first stage of putting such a culture in place is a diagnostic one, using 360 appraisals, and referring to exit interviews. Shifting the culture is a long-term endeavour, starting with the C-suite.Concerning job interviews, Elena says “now is a beautiful time to ask questions, and remember that when you are being interviewed you are also interviewing the other person.”Becoming a Dare to Lead Facilitator was “a really beautiful moment.” Elena says that Brene Brown has created a common language to discuss things openly [shame, guilt, vulnerability, authenticity] that were formerly rarely spoken of.Elena’s proudest achievement in her career as a coach is in “serving marginalised people that get to see possibility for the first time.” (And as an opera singer, singing at Carnegie Hall.)Her biggest mistake as a rookie coach was to try to go too deep too soon with a senior executive. He wasn’t feeling ready to be so vulnerable, and he fired her. They later apologised to one another. It taught Elena the difference between being with people and pushing people.On her journey, Elena was inspired by Michael Madden, her first boss after her opera career. He gave her the opportunity to build what was next for her, and encouragement.To aspiring leaders, Elena would recommend the Dare to Lead and Unlocking Us podcasts, both hosted by Brene Brown. Also anything by Simon Sinek, and ‘I Feel Awful: Chronicles of Leadership’ by Christine Sachs. One of her favourite books on leadership is ‘The Culture Code’ by Daniel Coyle.Elena adopts an in-the-moment approach to self-care, asking herself each morning what she needs that day. Sometimes that can be a cup of tea, or it may be a walk with her dogs, yoga, meditation or working out. For her it’s part of “regrowing the muscle to listen to my own intuition.”Elena’s advice to her 20-year old self would be that considering “who you want to be about things” is critical, and the work will follow from there.

Nancy Kline is Founder and President of Time to Think, Author of Time to Think, More Time to Think, and The Promise That Changes Everything: I Won’t Interrupt You. She is a coach and speaker, and a visiting lecturer at Henley Business School.Before ‘coach’ became a common part of the business vocabulary, her job involved listening and helping people to listen to one another, and Nancy was already working on the question “How do we help people to think for themselves?”Nancy has always been a writer – she has written 11 books in all - but ‘Time to Think’ was her breakthrough best seller. At present, and for a while now, she has had to manage the tension between writing, and running a leadership development and coaching business. Ultimately, she has recognised that the two are inextricable and that her writing and her thinking environment work serve each other.Nancy says she experienced her mother (and father) as what she would now call “an embodied thinking environment.” She reflects that her mother hardly ever interrupted her, and she seemed interested all of the time, so much so that her ‘way of being’ became what Nancy understood listening to be. She says “The quality of everything we do depends on the quality of the thinking we do first. And then the quality of our thinking depends on the way people are treating us while we are thinking.”Nancy’s vision is that one day every human being will live in a thinking environment from birth to death. She says ‘Time to Think’ the organisation is not really an organisation but a loose network of qualified professionals. The strategy of ‘Time to Think’ is “to discover, teach, and qualify people” and to work with those qualified people and others to learn and discover more.Nancy’s leadership philosophy is that “the core job of a leader is to generate the finest thinking from everybody whom they influence” which requires them to be able to create the conditions for good independent thinking wherever they are.She believes that there are differences in what the male and female cultures allow by way of instruction in how to lead. She believes that there are facets of female culture that allow them to create thinkingenvironments more consistently than male culture. However, you can learn to superimpose on your own culture the other gender’s cultural permission to create thinking environments. As a generalisation, you often find a better-quality thinking environment where a team has both men and women.Nancy feels deeply committed to the NHS. She came to the UK to live when she married Christopher Spence. She sees the NHS as “one expression of the finest in civilisation.” She believes that human beings are born with a right to healthcare and to education and “there’s something about going to bed at night and knowing that everybody’s going to get the care they need whether or not they can afford it. There’s something dignifying of me in knowing that they’re being dignified.”Nancy’s new book ‘The Promise that Changes Everything’ focuses on the one thing that Nancy considers to be the distinguishing characteristic of a thinking environment and that is the promise “I won’t interrupt you.” The book delineates the four generic systems of interruption that we live in.Nancy says that “the nature of a thinking environment… is that it is ever emergent… we are noticing new things all the time.” So, has she now written all that there is to say on the thinking environment? Probably not!Nancy is proud that she has stayed true to the idea that the conditions for independent thinking are there to be discovered. Therefore, it was never to become a methodology, but it was always going to be a fluid concept. And from the beginning she has wanted there to be “less company and more practitioners.” “Small is beautiful” has remained her organising principle.She has made plenty of mistakes but sees them as positive – it means that we have had the courage to go out there and try – and believes that we should get excited to see that we have made a mistake rather than defensive, frightened, or embarrassed.Nancy has been inspired on her journey by her parents, some important teachers, Christopher her husband, and by Peter Kline. Peter, her first boss, said “our first job here as teachers is to create whatever it will take for these young people to think for themselves, not just to think like us.”Books that Nancy Kline would recommend are “any book by Margaret Heffernan” on leadership, ‘Ignorance’ and ‘Failure’ by Stuart Firestein, and ‘The Tao of Leadership’ by John Heider. Nancy’s self-care regime includes a daily period of sitting and noticing, and starting the planning for her work with the question “What will give me energy and meaning?” She eats well, and she sleeps without an alarm. And also she has a thinking session every Sunday.To her 20-year old self Nancy would say “Please know, Nancy, that all things are going to turn out better than you can possibly imagine.”

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.

Mike Kent is Co-Founder and Managing Director of Kitlocker, Sheffield sportswear manufacturer and distributor, and an Associate Lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University.Kitlocker is an online retailer specialising in sportswear, and employing around 100 staff. Before Mike and his fellow MD Tom Ward ran Kitlocker they studied at Sheffield Hallam and played volleyball. After university Tom had the opportunity to play volleyball professionally, but opted to join Mike in implementing the business plan that Mike had produced in his second year.Mike wouldn’t necessarily commend the approach Tom and Mike took to equip themselves for success. In the early years they were “incredibly insular.” Only after the first decade did they become more externally facing. Building out their sales and marketing function was a catalyst for this. Recently the business has started to look at its education and training needs, but that’s more with an eye on the next generation of leaders in the business rather than on the founders. Mike sees his leadership role as being about “understanding where we are, where we are heading, and shaping the company to cater for the step changes that we encounter.” As the company has grown, making plans and communicating them has become more challenging.The aspects of thebusiness that enthuse Mike are problem-solving, particularly in relation to the e-commerce and manufacturing systems, and the people. Mike is intent onensuring that the company’s strategy, systems, and people are congruent.Mike’s approach to leadership has evolved with the business and experience, and is a blend of empathy for team members, support for the development of individuals, and quite an ”autocratic” style. A directive style is not natural to him, but has been a response to the young talent the company has recruited via University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam University (SHU) placement schemes. His favourite takeaway from SHU’s ‘Leading through Health and Wellbeing’ course (which Mike, Dave Hembrough and Chris Whitehead have all completed) is “ruthless on the issue, gentle on the person.”He concurs with Peter’s Drucker’s quote “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Kitlocker, however, does not have a single culture, indeed that would be challenging, because its teams are quite varied in character. The business is thinking about how it facilitates an effective culture in each department.The company’s story helps it in the recruitment of talent. When it comes to retention, the aim is to equip leaders to be more supportive and empathetic in relation to their teams. This needs to be embedded into the appraisal and development systems for all staff.Mike is proud of what Kitlocker’s teams have achieved, rather than what he has achieved (and there’s still plenty more to do). The company hasn’t made any “cataclysmic” mistakes, but it’s made many smaller mistakes and has learnt from them. One of Mike’s inspirations in starting the company was Jagged Globe, a company that lead climbing and mountaineering expeditions. They gave a two-hour talk to Mike’s Business Studies course on what the business does and their experiences as an SME. When Tom Ward said “Let’s do this” Mike cast his mind back to that presentation, which he felt was “a really cool journey.”Mike’s book recommendations are “Creativity Inc” by Catmull and Wallace, which is about managing creativity at Pixar, and “Good to Great” by Jim Collins. Mike is a fan of “The High Performance Podcast.”A growing business and a young family tend to crowd out Mike’s self-care regime, but he has become more aware of the importance of it as he has grown older. He has been working at his exercise regime, but also self-development, and “being mindful of being mindful.”His advice to his 20-year old self would be “Don’t be so insular.” Paying more attention to other companies and the external environment generally would have helped Kitlocker to see the bigger picture. Working more closely with suppliers, and Nike and Adidas, in recent years has greatly improved their understanding of the market.

Edmund Cross is a trainer and facilitator, and specialist in creating developmental spaces for individuals and teams.After a childhood in Northern Ireland, Edmund attended the University of Sussex where he studied French, and learnt to identify patterns and understand systems. He then trained as a nurse in Sheffield. He says “it taught me about the practicality of intervening in people’s lives.” Partly as a result of a back injury he moved into workingwith primary care teams on sexual health. After several years with the local health authority he worked at the University of Sheffield. Since being made redundant in a reorganisation he has been working independently – this compelled him to learn how not to be part of an organisation and a hierarchy.Edmund has a reputation for being able to sit with people while they resolve conflict. He puts it down to several skills he has picked up on his journey: sticking with people when they tell you something important, an understanding of rank and power, working with issues as they arise in the moment, and leaning into matters rather than shying away.He says “power underlies everything and we need to talk about it.” All of our relationships have an element of power in them. We experience power very early on, but we don’t talk about it: “it becomes invisible to us, and yet it shapes everything.” Once people have the tools and space to talk about, it becomes easier to surface the associated issues.Over the past five or six years Edmund has developed a way of working that involves introducing people to models, such as the Johari window and the window of tolerance, and then encouraging them to apply them to the business of the group as it arises in the moment. He seeks to help people to trust their own thoughts and emotions.Edmund is an enthusiast for ‘not knowing’: when you approach a problem with an open mind, more possibilities emerge. He adopts an orientation of curiosity and exploration. He finds David Snowden’s Cynefin framework helpful in this respect.Edmund has a daughter with a medical condition. Before her birth, Edmund envisaged a predictable future, afterwards he was dealing with uncertainty and crises as they came up. It taught him to live in the moment and give things his best shot as they arose.Edmund’s proudest achievement in his career concerns when,as a nurse, he acted as an advocate for a seriously ill patient who hadn’t made a will. One of his biggest mistakes was to speak for part of a group that he was facilitating without an invitation, taking on the mantle of leadership when it hadn’t been conferred upon him.The most formative experience for Edmund was a residential at Findhorn (https://www.findhorn.org/) which involved teaching on conflict and change by Ben Fuchs and Andrew Murray. The three books that Edmund would recommend to aspiring leaders are: The Practice of Adaptive Leadership by Ronald Heifetz, Sitting in the Fire by Arnold Mindell, and Difficult Conversations by Sheila Heen, Douglas Stone and others.Edmund’s self-care regime includes sailing, platform diving, and running. His advice to his 20-year old self would be “stick with it and let it unfold.”

This show is a departure from The CLI’s one-to-one format. Chris is joined by three guests to discuss joining up sport and wellbeing in Sheffield.Anna Lowe is Programme Manager at the National Centre for Sport and Exercise Medicine and Leader of Move More. Chris Dayson is Associate Professor in the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research, and leader of the Healthy and Active 100 research theme at the Advanced Wellbeing Research Centre (AWRC). Nigel Harrison is Chief Executive of the Yorkshire Sport Foundation. Move More is the vision of Sheffield as a happier, healthier, and more connected city. It recognises the key role that being more active has to play in that vision. The first Move More strategy was launched in 2015, and the second was launched in June 2021. It’s a whole systems approach to increasing physical activity in Sheffield. The six priority areas are communities, education, health and social care, environment, sport, and active travel.Anna observes that many of the things that support wellbeing are non-medical; such as relationships, nature, and moving more. The latest Move More strategy targets the areas of the city where the need is greatest, as characterised by geographical location (the most disadvantaged wards), and demographic groups such as age (older people), and sex (women and girls).The Yorkshire Sport Foundation (YSF) is one of 43 active partnerships across England, primarily funded by Sport England. Their role is one of “connecting, influencing, and, where needs be, providing opportunities to be active.” One of YSF’s managers is part of Anna’s Move More team.Active Burngreave is an example of a project involving close collaboration between Move More and YSF. The funding for this originated from Comic Relief. The physical activity and sport were designed around how the community operated. The project employed Safiya Saeed, now a local councillor. She is “the sticky person that everybody goes to in that particular area.” There are now several activity groups: Big Brothers, Reach Up, Sisters. The key, maintains Nigel, is that this is people in Burngreave organising things for themselves through local leadership. The role of Move More and YSF has been to support it in the background through funding, advice, and professional development.Chris Dayson explains that social prescribing is an opportunity for health practitioners to address a patient’s social and emotional needs by referring them on to activities in their community. Such activities may be social, physical, or a combination of the two. At the heart of the process – and where NHS England are investing a significant amount of money over 10 years – is the link worker. The link worker keeps abreast of what is happening in the community, and potentially also plays a community development role. They take the referral from the health practitioner, develop an understanding of the patient, and then put in place appropriate support and activities.Thus, social prescribing is a pathway from the NHS to the community, and it provides just one mechanism through which the Move More strategy might be delivered.Activities that involve connecting to nature or take place outdoors are sometime referred to as ‘green social prescribing.’ The government has seven test and learn sites for green social prescribing. South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw has one of these test and learn pilots. This is a cross-government initiative including NHS, Department of Health, Defra, along with sector partners such as Sport England and Natural England.At present we don’t know what proportion of social prescribing involves sports clubs, and in general there is a lack of knowledge about what capacity exists in the community and what can be done to support that capacity. Directories exist, but more important is the link worker’s understanding of the community and what is going on.Chris is heavily involved in the evaluation of social prescribing. He describes it as “the most evaluated thing of the 21st Century”, however most of the research is localised. NHS England are about to embark on a national study, and Sheffield Hallam, The University of Sheffield, and Exeter University have been commissioned to look at green social prescribing.How does a sports club become more engaged with Move More and also social prescribing?Anna acknowledges that Move More is only as strong as its networks, and depends for its success on collaboration across the city. To that end it maintains a website, holds quarterly partnerships meetings, convenes a partnership group, and is active on social media.Chris suggests that a club might make informal contact with the link worker from the closest Primary Care Network (PCN) and start a conversation. The Social Prescribing Network offers practical support to clubs that put their heads above the parapet, as does the National Academy for Social Prescribing. He suggests that this needs to be a point of focus for the coming years.What further opportunities do we need to take in order to join up sport and wellbeing in the city?Anna says implementing the current Move More strategy is key to that. Nigel says that the Move Move ambassadors programme is important; people who champion the cause of physical activity in the community. Additionally, physical activity needs to be integrated into all of the Council’s policies. Chris observes that poverty is one of the greatest barriers to participation and says that alongside the other good work that is being done, the city needs to address this issue.

Dr Julian Abel is a recently retired consultant in palliative care, former Vice President of Public Health Palliative Care International, and co-author with Lindsay Clarke of The Compassion Project: A Case for Hope and Humankindness from the Town that Beat Loneliness.From childhood Julian has tried to seek out what he can do that is “meaningful and helpful.” Going into healthcare was a direct expression of that. When he first entered medicine he discovered that it had a pronounced hierarchy. “The patient was nowhere near the top.”After a spell studying Chinese medicine and cranial osteopathy, he became a palliative care consultant in Weston-super-Mare within a service that covered hospice, community and hospitals. He became particularly interested in the community dimension of this because he came to understand that “the thing that makes the biggest difference is not the professional support but the love, laughter and friendship.” He says that it is deeply embedded in our nervous system: “we have a prosocial nervous system.”Julian’s book The Compassion Project is largely based on the Compassion Frome Model initiated by Dr Helen Kingston and Jenny Hartnoll, and which Julian helped to lead. It spun out of a paper initiated by Helen. Julian supported the paper with some statistics, which included that emergency admissions in Frome had decreased by 14% whilst in the rest of Somerset they had risen by 29%. It was clear that they were onto something.Up until this point no-one had come across an intervention that would reduce population emergency admissions. The team decided that they need to ‘go public’ and explain the building blocks of what they were doing and the benefits. Julian co-authored an article in Resurgence magazine, that was reported in the Guardian. Someone read the publicity and approached the Frome team concerning the possibility of writing a book.The Compassionate Frome model provides a means of connecting lonely and isolated patients with the plethora of activities that are going on in the community. The friendships brokered by Compassionate Frome create mental wellbeing which, via the mind-body connection, is reflected in physical wellbeing. Community connectors and health connectors play a key role in the Frome model. There are around 700 of the former (in a population of 28,000). The role of the community connectors is, by reference to a web directory, to signpost people to activities in the community that might be of interest. Julian the conversations that each connector has as a “little explosion of compassion in the community.”The health connectors are fewer in number and help people gain clarity on what is important to them and what they need when they are not in touch with these things. They are trained in motivational interviewing.His son Bewick has taken compassionate thinking into his primary school, located in a hard-pressed community. The first thing he did was help children recognise and name their emotions. And then they talked about which ones were beneficial to school life and which ones were harmful. More recently they have introduced a morning check-in, where they ask one another how they are, and if there is anything they can do to make it better. In time the children became happier and more connected and educational attainment improved dramatically.Julian feels that one of the challenges of the UK education system is that many of the ministers and civil servants are emotionally inarticulate themselves.Julian has formed an organisation Compassionate Communities UK (you can find it on the web at compassionate-communities.co.uk). It is focused on sharing, developing expertise, and education. Some of its work is professional facing and some is public facing. Julian’s podcast ‘Survival of the Kindest’ is also part of it.Julian is looking to develop expertise around community sources of support for trauma. “If you just rely on professional services, it’s never going to happen” he says.The books he would recommend include “When the Body Says No” by Gabor Mate. He also notes the work of Fritzi Horstman (for example the documentary “Step Inside the Circle”), and palliative care physician Naheed Dosani (for example TEDx talk “What’s a life worth?”). In his career, it’s the things that Julian has done that has promoted a sense of belonging and connectedness, that helped people realise that they weren’t alone, that Julian has found most fulfilling.In the world of palliative care, the person who inspired Julian the most was Allan Kellehear (of the University of Bradford). He has helped to reframe the subject, and has become a close friend of Julian.Julian doesn’t have a problem with self-care! He lives on the coast in Cornwall, he surfs, he meditates, goes running with his dogs, and has a steady trickle of family and friends who come to visit.Julian’s advice to his 20-year old self (or to himself at any age) is to understand that we are already compassionate. “We swim in a sea of compassion.” If you want to have a happy life, be healthier, have a meaningful life, live a long time, then be more compassionate.

Dr Amar Rughani is a leadership mentor and former Sheffield GP, former Royal College of General Practitioners examiner and Blueprinting clinical lead, and co-author with Joanna Bircher of ‘The Leadership Hike: Shaping Primary Care Together.’General practice didn’t become a specialty in its own right – in terms of having a compulsory licencing examination – until 2007. Amar was involved in defining what general practice involved. He believes good GPs engage first and foremost with people rather than with disease systems and lab tests. Understanding humanity is at the core of what GPs do.Similarly leadership was just an expectation of GP colleagues rather than being defined or taught until recently. Amar set out to define it so that it could be taught. He’s no longer sure it can be defined or taught, but it has been an interesting journey. His interest in leadership also stemmed from his reflections on working with patients collaboratively to improve their lives.He believes a strong argument can be made that effective leadership is highly context dependent. He found that much of the business literature on leadership – promoting positional power, control, personal achievement, and reward as motivators – didn’t really resonate with him. The values of primary care are more to do with compassion, community, engaging with complexity, openness, and honesty. And so he felt that he had to write the book, because he couldn’t find anything out there that said what was needed in a GP context.The book itself is “totally an exercise in compassionate leadership.” Amar says that he wanted to convey that he and Joanna did not have all the answers, but that people really matter, and “what they can do for their community matters for the whole world.” They called the book a ‘hike’ because they wanted people to feel that Amar and Joanna were accompanying them on their journey.In the book Amar says “maybe we should ask ourselves whether, if we rarely feel uncomfortable or need to use our courage, we are actually engaging in leadership at all.” If we are going to change things then first we will have to “stick our head above the parapet.” We’ve noticed that there is a problem and we care enough to actually say so. He also says “it is humbling to appreciate that so much of what differentiates people who are given higher or lower status by society is not determined, for example, by genetics or talent, but by resources, opportunity and support” and feels that the more we see ourselves as an elite, the more disconnected we are liable to become from the people we serve. Leaders generally operate along two dimensions – task and people – and the people dimension is normally harder. People need to be willing to connect with you, and to give their ‘discretionary effort.’ They won’t do that unless they feel their ideas are welcomed, they are going to be supported, given some resource perhaps, and receive some acknowledgement. But the start of it all is that they don’t feel that you look down on them or talk down to them.Amar maintains “our greatest potential for developing our most useful contributions lies not in the areas where we are weak, but in the areas where we are already strong.” At a traditional GP appraisal, weaknesses are identified and the expectation is that over the coming year you will spend time remedying your deficits. He found the work of the Gallup organisation, which is summarised in the book Strengths Finder 2.0, revelatory. That research revealed that a great number of measures of personal effectiveness were positively correlated with the ability of people to connect with what they were singularly good at. Therefore, one of the arts of leadership is to support people to engage with those strengths and apply them.Amar observes that in primary care, ones work can be so reactive that there seems to be little time to do much other than firefighting. However, it is nonetheless essential to clarify vision and direction. In his practice Amar promoted this by encouraging people to reconnect with the ‘why’ both in one-to-one conversations and in group discussions. You can also learn much about the ‘why’ of an organisation by observing what energises people, what they celebrate, what they discuss with passion over coffee.Towards the end of the book Amar warns “Power corrupts. No-one is exempt.” However, there are strategies we can adopt to resist the temptation to become grandiose and even abuse our leadership power. He believes we need to find the balance between the overuse of power, associated with coercion and control, and the opposite position where we seek to avoid influencing others altogether. To do that we need to “keep our antennae twitching” and sense how we are coming across to others. “How are people with us?” is a question explored in the book.On his journey Amar was inspired by Pat Lane, who was a regional director in medical education. He had a number of qualities that hugely helped Amar, and Amar has tried to bring them into his own life. He was a person of great energy, enthusiasm, and drive. He encouraged people who had original ideas, and backed up his encouragement with resources.Apart from his own book (!), Amar would recommend Simon Sinek’s TED Talk ‘How great leaders inspire action’, Sir Ken Robinson’s TED Talk ‘Do schools kill creativity?’, and Neil McGregor’s series of podcasts, ‘A history of the word in 100 objects.’ He would also recommend Otto Scharmer’s book ‘Theory U.’Amar’s self-care regime includes walking, working out, and yoga. He maintains a spiritual life, and he also has fun, and tries to “be fun.”His advice to his 20-year-old self would be: “You don’t necessarily have to slow down, but just linger... a little between the events of each day… what happens in the spaces is what really helps you to savour life.”  

Dr Richard Field OBE is a specialist in individual and organisation growth and development, Chairman of Highlander Computing Solutions, former Chairman and CEO of the Dyson Refractories Group, visiting professor at Sheffield Hallam University, and a former South Yorkshire Businessman of the Year.Dave Hembrough recommended Richard for the show – Richard made a big impression on him when Dave attended his 10-day Integral Leadership course. Richard was running a leadership course at Balliol College Oxford for the Industrial Society when he was approached by the Training and Enterprise Council to design “a world-class leadership programme.” Richard designed it with a team of collaborators over a period of two years. He describes the result as a “programme for life”, as relevant to a young student as to a board of directors.He and Rob Copeland of the Advanced Wellbeing Research Centre (AWRC) (episode 15, January 2020, of this podcast) have recently developed a further iteration of the programme called ‘Leading for Health and Wellbeing’ (LHW), which will be rolled out at the AWRC from June.He believes it is difficult to lead with compassion unless you are compassionate towards yourself. The Dale Carnegie training organisation has the ‘3Cs’ rule; “never criticism, condemn, or complain.” And Richard didn’t, except that he came to realise that the one person he was beating up was himself.At 35 Richard became the Chairman and Chief Executive of a large organisation. He sought advice on how to lead from a well-known business leader of the time David Frith, who told him there are only two things were necessary; be there and listen. Richard says “everyone is wonderful, it’s up to us to give them the space to be the best that they can be.”As a child Richard had encephalitis and was in a coma for a month. He was bullied at school, and had to wear irons because his bones were brittle. On a course, he heard a saying that changed his life: “By doing you become.” He started working hard and looking after other people. A life of achievement, recognised through his OBE, followed. One of the objectives of his leadership course is to help people avoid the pain that he went through.His leadership philosophy is that everyone is doing the best they can with the resources available to them, and that people are family. His style is to ask questions because then the answer comes from the individual and they are learning. If things don’t go so well, he asks how might that have gone better, and believes that reflection is one of the keys to life. He is chairman of several companies and believes that the effectiveness of teams is critical to successful business. The stronger the relationships within a board, the greater its ability to deal with challenging issues. The role of the chairman is to build those relationships, and create a culture of psychological safety within which difficult matters can be discussed openly. Richard sees the two greatest challenges facing business as social and environmental sustainability, and professionalism: entrepreneurs frequently fail through lacking the basic tools they need. Everyone should be continuously learning.His too proudest achievements in business are “just seeing people be the very best they can be”, and his Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) at Sheffield Hallam University.His biggest mistake concerns a visit by Tony Robbins to Sheffield Arena. At the last minute it transpired that the hire of the arena would be another £70,000 on account of the lighting rig. Firstly, Richard hadn’t written down the requirements of Tony’s team, and secondly he hadn’t monitored what was going on properly.The course that has had the greatest impact on Richard was the Industrial Society course where he learnt “In doing you become”, so much so that he returned as a volunteer on 15 occasions before eventually he was asked to run the programme.One of the people that has inspired Richard on his journey is Sir Hugh Sykes, with whom he worked in a management consultancy. He learnt from that experience that often barriers are created within ourselves.He believes that supporting young people is crucial to the future of the city region.Richard is an ambassador for Homeless and Roofless at Christmas (HARC, formerly the Archer Project), but he focuses on facilitation and training – the things he excels at – in order to support hospices, and other charities.Books Richard would recommend include ‘Shoe Dog’ by Phil Knight the creator of Nike, ‘Principles’ by Ray Dalio, ‘The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People’ by Steven Covey, and ‘The Servant’ by James C Hunter. Anyone who would like a comprehensive book list from Richard can obtain it by writing to rich@fieldenterprise.co.uk.Self-care is for Richard the most important thing of all. He says “unless you’re healthy then you can’t help others.” He does Tai Chi and yoga every day and meditates for 20 minutes each morning and evening.His advice to his 20-year-old self would be to slow down – you notice so much more – and reflect. How could I have done that better? What have I learnt from the situation? Also, he would advise him to focus and plan ahead, and look for the good things in other people and in yourself. Be there and listen, and do what you love to do, and work hard at it consistently.

Ollie Hart is a GP at Sloan Medical Centre Sheffield, Director of Peak Health Coaching, Clinical Commissioning Lead, social media influencer, and innovation leader in healthcare and wellness.His vision for the future of health and wellness in the UK involves inviting the individual and their community to take a more prominent role, as opposed to the healthcare system. All the research suggests that the impact of the system, based on a ‘medicalised model’ is far less than was imagined. The behaviour of the individual and the support provided to them by their community is the dominant factor in their health and wellbeing. He believes the pandemic has demonstrated that alternative ways of doing things can be better: video appointments and the vaccine delivery model, involving collaboration between clinicians, volunteers and the community, are two examples.Over time during his practice as a GP, Ollie discovered that the medical interventions he prescribed were often less effective than when he supported people in understanding their condition, and in adopting healthy behaviours. He learnt a lot of his health coaching skills in a pain clinic, where the drug treatment options were limited. He finds having good therapeutic relationships “recharging,” for him as well as his patients.He set up Peak Health Coaching to support clinicians in health coaching, patient activation measurement (PAM), and social prescribing. Patient activation is about understanding where a patient is on their journey to empowerment, and tailoring their coaching and treatment accordingly. Social prescribing in its simplest form helps connect people to organisations within their community that might help them to initiate or sustain good behaviours. In a wider context, it is about providing equitable access and support to all members of a community.General practice is “constantly redefining itself. We respond to need, and to changes in the evidence base.” He says “in our essence we are community-based organisations.” Link workers, health coaches, and care coordinators are all part of the current wave of change. Ollie believes GPs with health coaching knowledge are in a position to make a judgement call on the most beneficial use of their time with a particular patient, whether that is in understanding their context better, or whether it is in discussing a prescription for a new medication. Good health coaching can create time, by starting a patient on a path that he might then pursue outside of the consultation.Ollie believes that health coaching can reduce health inequalities, but only if it is done with skilful consideration of the individual. If executed clumsily it can overwhelm the patient. He contends that there are no cultural barriers to health coaching, but the socio-economic circumstances of any community, irrespective of ethnicity, need to be carefully considered in its deployment. Ollie was instrumental in setting up the Graves Park Park Run. He feels it is a great example of an initiative that once executed with skill and imagination takes on a life of its own. He says “what they tuned into in Park Run was that it was not just about the running and the exercise, it was about the connection and … the common purpose.”Ollie says that the NHS and the current experiment in personalised care – the NHS has a target of recruiting 1,000 new link workers by the end of the 2021 – is a great example of learning by doing, somewhat similar to Park Run. He maintains that to promote an environment of innovation there has to be a degree of tolerance of risk, and a preparedness to accept failure. And whilst there has to be some acknowledgement of the potential downsides, if the system doesn’t innovate it misses the opportunity of improved approaches that may save lives.Through his appearances on radio and television, and also on social media, Ollie is influencing the direction of the NHS and government. He doesn’t have a deliberate PR strategy, but he is taking opportunities as they arise in support of a mission to support people and communities to perform at their best. He constantly checks whether what he is doing is genuinely supporting his mission or ‘fuelling his ego.’Ollie is an optimist by nature. He says “I’ve always had a positive internal dialogue” and he is generally compassionate with himself.He recently passed on his role as an executive on Move More, Sheffield’s 20-year physical activity plan, to two of his GP colleagues. Though Move More has always been close to his heart, he says with such a long-term project you “need to keep the energy fresh and new peoples’ ideas flowing through… If you’re taking a leadership role, it’s important to know when it is time to bring other people in.” The new Move More [5-year] plan will focus more on the 20-25% of the population that are physically active for less than 30 minutes a week, and on the communities that most need support.Ollie works as a clinical care network leader and as a clinical director. In these roles he tries less to give specific advice than to help people think clearly for themselves, and have the confidence to take tough decisions and, on occasion, experiment. It’s a coaching approach to leadership.Ollie’s self-care regime revolves around physical exercise, the family, and nature. He cycles, runs on the hills of the Peak District, and takes walks with his family.The book ‘Being Mortal’ by Atul Gawande, which he read shortly after his father’s death, made a big impression on Ollie. He loves the Fairhealth podcast (https://fairhealth.org.uk/podcasts/) and Ranjan Chatterjee’s the Four Pillars of Health (https://drchatterjee.com/blog/category/podcast/). Sometimes he likes to take in non-health related material, for example The Knowledge Project (https://fs.blog/knowledge-project/). “It keeps your curiosity in life going.”He says he wouldn’t give his 20-year old self any advice. For one thing, there’s too many people in the world giving advice. Life’s a genuine adventure and you generally have to make your own mistakes. Ollie says “I’d just let myself make the same mistakes again and enjoy the journey.”