NHS Leadership Academy

The Academy’s philosophy is that great leadership development improves leadership behaviours and skills. Better leadership leads to better patient care, experience and outcomes. Its purpose is to work with its partners to deliver excellent leadership across the NHS to have a direct impact on patient care.

The Academy offers a range of resources and programmes to support individuals, organisations and local academies to develop leaders, celebrating and sharing where outstanding leadership makes a real difference.

Range of support available

The Academy offers a range of tools, models, programmes and expertise to enable those at every level of their leadership journey to fulfil their potential.

The aim is to support individuals, organisations and local academies to develop leaders, celebrating and sharing where outstanding leadership makes a difference. 

Programmes

There is a wide range of programmes for you to consider if you:

• are interested in leadership or further developing your management skills
• want to challenge the status quo and find better ways of doing things
• want to improve patient care

The programmes available include:

• The Edward Jenner programme - for participants who are new to leadership by helping them to gain a fresh perspective on the delivery of services and impact they have on the patient experience.
• The Mary Seacole programme - designed for those looking to move into their first formal leadership role, or those new to first time leadership. 
• The Elizabeth Garraett Anderson programme - aims to equip new or aspiring senior leaders with the confidence to drive lasting change to improve the patient experience.
• The Nye Bevan programme - aimed at developing the best executive leaders by helping them to perform better at board level. 
• The Director programme - aimed at all executive directors and those in equivalent roles, who are seeking further role development and support.

The NHS Leadership Academy also runs:

• A programme for newly appointed chief executives.
• The Ready Now programme for aspiring black and minority ethnic (BME) leaders.
• Return to Work Mentoring programme for those leaders planning to take maternity leave, paternity leave, adoption leave, carers leave or fostering.
• The NHS Graduate Management Training Scheme for graduate trainees to become future leaders in the NHS.
• The HOPE European Exchange programme for those with healthcare managerial responsibilities by providing a unique opportunity to exchange time in their healthcare system with another EU member state.

• The Academy's mission

  The NHS Leadership Academy’s mission is to develop outstanding leadership in health, in order to improve people’s health and their experiences of the NHS. They aim to do this by:

  • broadening, and where necessary changing, the range of leadership behaviours people in the health system use
  • professionalising leadership: raising the profile, performance and impact of health system leaders, requiring and supporting them to demonstrate their fit and proper readiness to carry out their leadership role and defining what we expect from them
  • working in partnership to make leadership in the health system more inclusive and representative of the communities it serves
  • developing leaders who are more innovative and can create a climate where innovation can flourish

• The Academy's approach

  The philosophy behind the Academy's leadership development principles are:

  • for leaders to be at their most effective they need confidence in their role
  • to secure confidence they need competence, skills, expertise, experience and support. This comes from expert development and training as well as on the job learning
  • leaders need to have a breadth of behaviours to draw on to exercise their role in a multi-agency, complex system such as health care. Lack of development tends to result in leaders having a very narrow range of styles to draw on
  • leaders need the right behaviours to build alliances with a wide range of professionals and across organisational boundaries to serve the needs of diverse communities with enduringly complex needs. The success of the NHS over the next decade or so will rely heavily on the behaviours adopted by healthcare leaders at all levels being able to work with leaders in other parts of the public and private system
  • leaders need to be able to engage and empower those working with them, and rely less on old style command and control approaches that inhibit innovation, discretionary effort and a more caring and considerate climate to work that generate both employee engagement and compassion in care